A feminine form of Andrew or Andrea, from Greek andros meaning 'man' or 'manly' in origin.
Andraya is a modern variant of Andrea, the English and Romance-language feminine form of the Greek Andreas, which derives from anḗr (genitive andrós), meaning "man" in the sense of a human being of valor and strength. Andreas was the name of one of the twelve apostles — the first called by Jesus, according to the Gospel of John — and Saint Andrew became patron saint of Scotland, Russia, Greece, and Romania, giving the name extraordinary geographic reach across the Christian world. The feminine Andrea emerged most prominently in Italian and Spanish usage before spreading globally.
The respelling as Andraya represents a broader late-twentieth-century American naming practice of phonetic individuation — maintaining a name's sound and identity while creating a distinct orthographic signature. The -aya ending gives the name a flowing, open quality and aligns it visually with names from Yoruba, Swahili, and other African-origin naming traditions, which has contributed to its particular resonance in African American communities. Andraya Yearwood, the Connecticut high school track athlete whose participation in girls' sports became a flashpoint in national debates about transgender athletes and Title IX in the late 2010s, brought the name to prominent public attention.
Linguistically, Andraya retains the core meaning of strength and humanity embedded in its Greek root while wearing it in a distinctly contemporary American register. It is a name that feels both grounded — rooted in a name tradition going back two millennia — and unmistakably of its moment, shaped by the same creative orthographic energy that has enriched American naming culture since the mid-twentieth century.