Tara

Tara arrives from several directions at once. In Sanskrit it means star, and belongs to the Buddhist bodhisattva of compassion revered from Tibet to Mongolia in twenty-one forms. In Irish it is Teamhair, the Hill of Tara, the ceremonial seat of the high kings and the spiritual heart of early Ireland. Gone with the Wind gave American readers a plantation of the same name, and the 1970s lifted Tara into the top hundred for girls in the United States before it slowly receded. Two soft syllables, both open vowels, nothing sharp. A name of unstudied grace that keeps finding new reasons to be chosen.