Used as a short modern name, though it also echoes the ancient sun-god name Ra and carries a bright, elemental feel.
Ra is one of the oldest names in the written record of human civilization, belonging to the ancient Egyptian sun god who was, for much of pharaonic history, considered the supreme deity. The name itself, in ancient Egyptian, quite simply meant "sun." Ra was not merely a personification of solar warmth but of order, creation, and kingship: each pharaoh was understood to be Ra's earthly manifestation, ruling as the sun god's son.
The god was depicted as a man with the head of a falcon crowned by a solar disk, traversing the sky in a divine barque each day and navigating the underworld each night, battling the chaos serpent Apophis to ensure sunrise would come again. The name absorbed other deities as Egyptian theology evolved — Ra merged with Amun to become Amun-Ra, the "king of gods," and with Horus to become Ra-Horakhty. This syncretism made Ra a kind of theological foundation that other divine identities were built upon.
In the Ennead of Heliopolis, Ra was the originator of creation itself, the self-generated first being. His mythology influenced the later sun cults of the ancient Mediterranean and has echoes in later solar theology from the Roman Sol Invictus to allegorical readings of Christian iconography. As a given name in the modern era, Ra is used across cultures: in Japan it can be written with kanji meaning "良" (good) or "羅" (gauze/net); in Polynesian communities it carries solar associations independent of Egypt; and in Western naming culture, Ra has attracted parents seeking a name that is maximally short, maximally ancient, and freighted with cosmic scale. Two letters containing five thousand years of meaning.