Lara is a Russian short form of Larisa, a name of a Greek city whose meaning is uncertain but often explained as "citadel" or, from the Latin, as "cheerful". The heroine Lara Antipova in Boris Pasternak's Doctor Zhivago and the 1965 film made the name known in the West, and the video game heroine Lara Croft kept it current. In the United States Lara ranked number 848 in 2000, peaked at number 635 in 2002 and has stayed in the 680 to 820 range, ranking number 693 in 2025.