Sara

The form originated in Greek and Latin transcriptions of older Western Asian texts, dropping the closing aspiration found in Sarah. English parish rolls recorded the two spellings interchangeably for centuries before print standardized them. American parents favored the variant with the final consonant for most of the nineteenth century, but began adopting the shorter spelling in large numbers during the nineteen-seventies.

The name reads as an early-eighties staple stripped of spare punctuation. A Sara tends to be pictured with a spiral notebook, a sensible fleece jacket, and a birth certificate dated between the Carter administration and the launch of compact discs. The generational weight sits squarely in the Millennial column, where forty-one percent of all living bearers reside. The average bearer is now forty years old and has spent four decades clarifying that her name ends without an h.