This name was not regularly given to people until the 19th century [4][3]. It was used by George Eliot for a character in her novel Daniel Deronda (1876).
The most notable bearer of the name was Cyrus the Great, the founder of the Achaemenid Persian Empire in the 6th century BC. He is famous in the Old Testament for freeing the captive Jews and allowing them to return to Israel after his conquest of Babylon. As an English name, it first came into use among the Puritans after the Protestant Reformation.