Vera has 147,970 cumulative American girls on SSA record, a 1918 peak that placed it inside the top 60, and a current rank of 226. The chart shape is a textbook double-arc: deep early-20th-century use, complete fade through the mid-century, and a quiet 21st-century revival that has pulled the name back from outside the top 1000 to its current top-250 position.
The Russian and Latin sources
Vera has two parallel etymologies. In Russian and other Slavic languages, Vera means "faith," sitting alongside Nadezhda ("hope") and Lyubov ("love") in a traditional triad of Christian virtue names. In Latin, Vera is the feminine form of the adjective verus meaning "true" or "truth." The two source threads converge on a name that reads philosophically weighty without belonging exclusively to either tradition.
Vera entered the American naming chart through Russian and Eastern European immigration in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, with the 1918 peak coinciding with the early-immigration cohort's child-bearing years. The Latin reading has supported continued use in Italian and Hispanic-American households, giving the name a multi-tradition mainstream appeal.
The vintage-revival cohort
Vera travels with the broader cluster of early-20th-century girls' names that have come back since 2010: Mabel, Iris, Hazel, Cora, and Pearl all share the era-peak shape. Vera sits at the slightly more austere end of the cluster, with the two-syllable structure and the strong V opening giving it a confident, slightly continental landing that other cluster members lack.
British actress Vera Farmiga (born 1973) and the British detective drama Vera (2011-) anchored the modern cultural visibility, alongside fashion designer Vera Wang (born 1949), whose career and brand have kept the name in front of American consumers since the 1990s. Russian-American novelist Vera Nabokov (1902-1991), wife and literary partner of Vladimir Nabokov, anchors the more literary-academic register, and the Soviet-era cosmonaut Valentina Tereshkova's contemporaries included multiple notable Veras across science and culture.
The counter-reading
Worth flagging the dual-tradition pronunciation. The Russian VYE-ra and the English VEE-ra are both standard, and bilingual families typically navigate the choice early. English-default households generally land on VEE-ra without much discussion, but the Slavic pronunciation can surface in academic, religious, or heritage contexts.
Sibling pairings lean similarly austere-vintage: Vera and Iris, Vera and Cora, Vera and Hazel. Middle names tend short and grounding: Vera Jane, Vera Rose, Vera Kate. Browse Russian-origin girl names for the broader cluster.