Ciara is an Irish name, the feminine form of Ciarán, and comes from the Gaelic ciar, which means "dark" or "black-haired". In Ireland it is pronounced KEER-a, but in the United States the singer Ciara, who broke through in 2004, made the pronunciation see-AIR-a familiar. Ciara ranked number 282 in the United States in 2000, peaked at number 149 in 2005 and has declined since, leaving the top 1000 in 2017 and standing at number 1408 in 2025.