Why do people spell Sara with a h?

Question

I always wondered why people spelled my name with an h. it confused me. It's like people spell it with no h then they will say with an h and you don't have to scribble it out. You can just write it in. Geez! Wierdos.

Answer 1

The reason they do this, is that the spelling "Sarah" is the way the Hebrew name comes to us in English Bible translations (for reasons I hope to make clear below).

It is still the much more common way of spelling the name in English, so you should not be surprised that people think you spell it that way. In fact, you can look up the frequency of names in the 1990 U.S. census. The following page explains the numbers and gives you a link to the frequency of feminine first names. "Sarah" is 23rd on the list, "Sara" is 84th, and according to the percentages in the list, there were about two-and-and-half times as many women who spelled their name "Sarah".
http://www.census.gov/genealogy/names/

In any case, note that the name is pronounced the same however you spell it. (No, people do NOT add the h to get a "faint h" sound!)

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And here's WHY the name ended up with an "h".

The name "Sarah" is a Hebrew name --the name of Abraham's wife (Genesis 17, etc). In the Hebrew spelling there IS an "h" (Hebrew letter "he") written at the end, which marked feminine forms (see below).

Some translations of the Bible -- like the ancient Greek translations did not use an equivalent letter (in fact, Greek does not HAVE an "h"!). So if you bring the name into English through Greek you wouldn't have it. Or you may just decide to omit the letter, since it doesn't "do" anything. No problem with that.

But actually, "Sarah" is the more traditional spelling -- since English translations of the Hebrew Bible have almost always rendered it that way.

For what it's worth -- ancient Hebrew was written ONLY with consonants. It did not have any written vowel sounds. However, though through various changes in the language, certain consonants in certain positions could end up marking a vowel. This is one of those cases: the feminine ending pronounced "ah" was marked by the letter h (that is "he").

This could be important. the form written "sr" (pronounced "sar") was the masculine form, meaning prince". The final H indicated that it was the feminine form "sara(h)", or "princess".

Other Hebrew girl's names with the same variation are "Susannah/Susanna" and "Rebekah/Rebecca". (In each case the second form came into English through the Greek.)

Also, the name Anna (from which we get "Anne") is a Greek version of the Hebrew "Hannah".

Now there is a feminine "-a" ending in other languages and so in many feminine names. But if you find it spelled with "-ah" it almost certainly was originally a Hebrew name

Answer 2

To differentiate between the way Sara and Sarah are pronounced.

One is pronounced Say-Ra and the other Sah-Ra

Answer 3

Some Parents want there child's name to be pronounced Sa-ra and some want it to be pronounced sa-ra-h with a faint H sound at the end