Korra is an American invented name, possibly inspired by the Inuit name Korra ("young woman") — chosen by writers Bryan Konietzko and Michael Dante DiMartino for the lead character of Nickelodeon's The Legend of Korra (2012-2014). Avatar Korra — *the next incarnation of the Avatar after Aang from Avatar: The Last Airbender; a Southern Water Tribe waterbender, earthbender, firebender, and airbender; the first female Avatar to lead a Nickelodeon animated series. The 52-episode show is among the most-acclaimed animated series of the 2010s — it received the Annie Award for Best Animated Television Production for Children (2013, 2014), and Time magazine ranked the season 4 finale among the most-progressive moments in American television for its open conclusion implying a romantic relationship between Korra and her female friend Asami Sato ("Korrasami"). The 2017-2019 Legend of Korra graphic novel sequels (Dark Horse Comics) made the relationship explicit; the books became bestselling LGBTQ+ YA graphic novels of their era. Korra is voiced by Korean-Canadian actress Janet Varney across the entire series. The character's redesigns and martial-arts choreography influenced subsequent action-animation worldwide. A top-1000 US baby name since 2014 — a rare case of a stage-name to baby-name crossover for an animated character*.
Featured throughout 2010s animation and LGBTQ+ media history.
Korra 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.
In Pythagorean numerology the letters of Korra reduce to 9, The Giver. This is a traditional interpretive system, not a factual claim about the name.