Entry № 1268 · Greek origin

Barbara Barbara — Meaning, Origin & Baby Name Popularity

/ BAR-brah /
Gender
Girl
Origin
Greek
Meaning
"Foreign / stranger (peaked #2 in 1937; Barbara Walters, Barbara Jordan)"
Syllables
3
First recorded
Medieval (Latin)

A name that means "foreign / stranger (peaked #2 in 1937; barbara walters, barbara jordan)".

Barbara is from the Greek barbaros ("non-Greek-speaking, foreign") — the same root as "barbarian." Ranked #2 in the US in 1937; held a top-10 spot from 1927 to 1958.

Foreign / stranger (peaked #2 in 1937; Barbara Walters, Barbara Jordan) — a Greek name.

The name in its native script.

Barbara
Transliteration
Barbara
Pronunciation
/ ˈbɑːr.brə /
Root
Grammatical form

Where Barbara stands.

Barbara does not currently appear in the US Social Security Administration's top 1,000 girls' names, so we don't publish a US rank or birth count for it. That says nothing about the name's standing elsewhere in the world — only that it sits outside the ranked US data we rely on.

Barbaras before her.

Real people
Barbara Walters
American news anchor.
1929 – 2022
Barbara Jordan
American congresswoman.
1936 – 1996
Barbra Streisand
American Oscar-winning singer.
born 1942
In fiction
Barbara
Major Barbara.
1905

Names connected to Barbara.

The number behind Barbara.

7

The Seeker

In Pythagorean numerology the letters of Barbara reduce to 7, The Seeker. This is a traditional interpretive system, not a factual claim about the name.