Holiday Calendar

National Tamara Day

Next celebratedSaturday, April 10, 2027

Everyone named Tamara celebrates alongside Tamera and Tamra: all three spellings jumped in the same year, 1957, when Debbie Reynolds took a song called Tammy to number one.

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Last updated September 3, 2026 · by the Holiday Calendar TeamHave an update or spot an error?
YEARLY DATEApril 10
OBSERVED INInternationally
CATEGORYNames
ORIGIN

Community Origin

FOUNDING ENTITY
Not documented
FIRST OBSERVED
Not documented
HOW THE HOLIDAY CAME TO BE

The one dated listing gives a year it cannot source.

National Tamara Day circulates through holiday listings and through posts by people who carry the name, and the single dated listing found gives a year without sourcing it. No founder, first observance or establishing document could be traced.

+ Know the story? Submit a founder Help us complete this holiday
INTRO

The three letters that swept a federal name file

Sort the girls' names in the Social Security Administration's national file for 1956 by how many times over each one grew into the next year. The top seven all start with the same three letters. The eighth name on that list is Bernardine.

The file holds 6,891 names, and only twenty of them begin with Tam. Seven of that twenty took every place at the top. National Tamara Day belongs to one of the names that rose with them.

Tamara was not one of the seven, though. It came 51st, and its Hebrew parent barely moved: Tamar counted 27 American girls that year against 28 the next.

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ORIGINS

Tamara Day history

INTRODUCTION

In 1184 a woman took sole control of the kingdom of Georgia. Medieval Georgian sources gave her the title mepe, which means king. It marked her out as the first woman to rule the country in her own right.

Tamar ruled until 1213, over what historians call the Georgian Golden Age. Every Tamara carries a version of her name.

CHAPTER 01

From a date palm to a Russian ending

Tamar means date palm in Hebrew, and the Old Testament gives the name to more than one woman. Behind the Name files Tamara as the Russian form of it.

English picked it up late, in the 1930s. American records run slightly ahead, with five or more girls named Tamara first listed in 1917. The name then took another two decades to reach the national top 1,000.

CHAPTER 02

The year the prefix split

Sharing three letters was not enough in 1957. Tamsin, which Behind the Name traces to Thomasina rather than to Tamar, fell below the five-birth floor that year, and Tamzen fell with it.

Tamsen and Tamlyn held exactly level, and Tamar itself, the root Tamara grew from, gained a single girl. Behind the Name calls Tammy a short form of Tamara and of other names that begin with Tam. That summer Debbie Reynolds took a song called Tammy to number one.

CHAPTER 03

A day with no author

National Tamara Day carries none of that documentation. The listings that give it a starting year do not say where the year came from, and nothing turned up naming a person or an organisation behind the day.

What the day has instead is the name, and the name comes with a federal paper trail. Almost nothing claimed about Tamara has to be taken on trust.

TIMELINE

Timeline

Tamar takes the Georgian throne

She began her sole reign over Georgia, and medieval Georgian sources gave her the title mepe, meaning king.

First Tamaras reach the file

For the first time at least five American girls named Tamara appear in the Social Security Administration's national data.

Lempicka's breakthrough year

Tamara de Lempicka showed at the Paris exposition that gave Art Deco its name and held her first major exposition, in Milan.

Tammy reaches number one

Tammy and the Bachelor opened on 14 June and Debbie Reynolds's recording of its title song topped all three American charts.

Tamara's biggest year

The national file records 4,721 girls given the name, ahead of 1969's 4,652 and with no other year above 4,600.

Out of the top 1,000

On 231 births, Tamara fell outside the top 1,000 girls' names in the national data for the first time.

WHY THIS DAY MATTERS

Why We Love National Tamara Day

EVIDENCE

One name, counted and published every year since 1880.

The Social Security Administration has published a count for every listed American given name in every year since 1880, Tamara among them. So a claim about how common the name was, and when, can be tested against a public federal file rather than repeated.

SPREAD

Seventeen languages keep the name

Behind the Name lists Tamara in current use in seventeen languages, among them Russian, Georgian, Hungarian, Croatian, Dutch and Lithuanian. A day for the name belongs to no single one of them.

SCARCITY

Forty straight years above a thousand

A thousand or more American girls were named Tamara in every year from 1957 to 1996, without a single gap in the run. The national file listed 111 of them in 2025.

BY THE NUMBERS

National Tamara Day by the Numbers

71
Consecutive years in SSA's top 1,000
12
Consecutive years in SSA's top 100
131,286
US girls named Tamara since 1880
14,282
US girls named Tamera since 1880
13,710
US girls named Tamra since 1880

GOOD TO KNOW

Surprising facts about National Tamara Day

The film's heroine was not called Tammy

In Tammy and the Bachelor, Debbie Reynolds plays Tambrey Tyree. Tambrey appears in no national file before 1957 and has cleared five births in only five years since.

Tamera came back in the 1990s

While Tamara and Tamra kept sliding, Tamera climbed from 67 girls in 1993 to 286 in 1996. It more than quadrupled while its two sister spellings fell.

In Cornwall, Tamara is a river

Mabel Quiller-Couch's Cornwall's Wonderland tells of Tamara, a golden-haired sprite and the daughter of two gnomes, whose father turns her into a stream. Her suitors Tavy and Tawridge become the rivers Tavy and Taw.

417 American boys were named Tamara

The national files list Tamara as a boy's name in 35 separate years, totalling 417 births. The first of them was 1957, the same year the girls' surge began.

A name can vanish without vanishing

The Social Security Administration leaves out any name with fewer than five occurrences in a year. Tamra has not been listed since 2019, which means fewer than five a year, not none.

GET INVOLVED

How to Celebrate National Tamara Day

EDITOR'S PICK

Look up the name in the federal file

The whole series is public, one file for every year since the beginning. Start at the national data page and follow Tamara, Tamera and Tamra from one year to the next.

ASK

Ask a Tamara which spelling she was given

Tamara, Tamera and Tamra are three separate entries in the national data, not one name with loose spelling. Getting it right is the smallest useful thing you can do for someone today.

READ

Read the Cornish legend of the river

Mabel Quiller-Couch retold the story of Tamara the sprite in 1914. The chapter is free to read at Project Gutenberg.

COOK

Cook something with dates

Tamar is the Hebrew word for date palm, so the fruit is the name's literal meaning. Sticky date pudding, a date and walnut loaf or a bowl of medjools all fit the day.

LOOK

Look up Tamara de Lempicka's portraits

She painted 28 new works in six months to fill the exhibition that made her reputation. An hour with her Art Deco portraits is a fair way to spend the day.

Test your knowledge

How well do you know National Tamara Day?

1 / 8

What does the Hebrew name Tamar mean?

Answer

No. It is an unofficial observance with no legal standing found, and a search of the US Federal Register's document index returns nothing under the name.

COLOPHON

Sources

How we know what’s on this page. References, not endorsements.

14sources
4primary records
10independently dated
Primary records
US Social Security Administration2026-03
National data on the relative frequency of given names, 1880 to 2025
Annual counts of US births by given name and sex, one file per year since 1880.
View source
US Social Security Administration2025
Popular Baby Names: Beyond the Top 1000 Names
The rule excluding names under five births, and the top-1000 share of all US births by year.
View source
US Federal Register
Federal Register document search
Full-text index of US federal rules, notices and presidential documents.
View source
Project Gutenberg1914
Cornwall's Wonderland, by Mabel Quiller-Couch
The 1914 retelling of how Tamara the sprite became the River Tamar.
View source
Additional coverage
Behind the Name
Meaning, origin and history of the name Tamara
Tamara as the Russian form of Tamar, with its variant spellings, diminutives and seventeen usages.
View source
Behind the Name
Meaning, origin and history of the name Tamar
Tamar as Hebrew for date palm, its Old Testament bearers and the Georgian queen.
View source
Behind the Name
Meaning, origin and history of the name Tamsin
Tamsin as a contracted form of Thomasina, traditionally used in Cornwall.
View source
Behind the Name2008-07
Meaning, origin and history of the name Tammy
Tammy as a short form of Tamara and of other names beginning with Tam.
View source
Wikipedia2025
Tamara (given name)
The Russian derivation, the name's arrival in English in the 1930s and the Cornish river legend.
View source
Wikipedia2025
Tammy (given name)
The several parent names Tammy can shorten, including Tamsin and Thomasina.
View source
Wikipedia2025
Tammy and the Bachelor
The 1957 film, its 14 June release and Debbie Reynolds as Tambrey Tyree.
View source
Wikipedia2025
Tammy (song)
The Livingston and Evans song, its Oscar nomination and its run to number one.
View source
Wikipedia2025
Tamara de Lempicka
The painter's 1925 breakthrough and the Milan show she made 28 works for.
View source
Wikipedia2026
Tamar I
The Georgian ruler of 1184 to 1213 and the title mepe, king, given her in medieval sources.
View source
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