Possibly from Arabic 'amira' meaning 'princess,' or a feminine form of Elmer.
Elmira is a name of layered etymology. It may derive from the Arabic "al-amira" (the princess, the commander), filtered into European naming traditions through Moorish Spain and the medieval romances that drew on Iberian culture. Alternatively, some scholars link it to the Old Spanish "Almira" or to Germanic components suggesting nobility.
Like many names that crossed linguistic borders in the medieval and early modern periods, Elmira absorbed something from each tradition it passed through. The name came to the United States partly through direct migration and partly through its association with Elmira, New York — a city named in 1828 that became, in its own way, historically significant. The Elmira Prison Camp operated there during the Civil War and the city later became the resting place of Mark Twain, who is buried in its Woodlawn Cemetery.
The name thus carries both the romance of its Arabic roots and a distinctly American geographic identity. Elmira was reasonably popular in the United States through the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, fading quietly through the mid-1900s. Its current obscurity gives it an air of genuine discovery — it sounds at once exotic and deeply rooted, with the kind of four-syllable cadence that feels ceremonial without being heavy. Parents who find it are often drawn by the combination of its soft sounds and its quietly aristocratic heritage.