नामकरण Indian Baby Names

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Sanskrit Baby Names with Meanings and Sources

Sanskrit baby names for boys and girls with dictionary-backed meanings, Devanagari spellings, IAST transliteration and pronunciation audio.

About this collection

Every name on this page connects to a Sanskrit headword that a dictionary records. That is a narrower claim than it sounds: it means the word exists with the stated sense in Wiktionary or the Monier-Williams dictionary, not that the name was used in ancient India or that the popular gloss covers all its senses. Where the dictionary supports only part of the usual meaning, the guide says which part.

Sanskrit names fall into a few recognizable families. Words for light and the sun give Ravi, Aditya, Aarush, Kiran, Diya and Aruna. Words for the divine give Dev, Devansh, Devika, Ishaan and Isha. Abstract virtues give Dhriti, Shaurya, Samarth, Vidya and Shreya. Epithets of deities and heroes give Madhav, Raghav, Parth, Kartik and Rudra.

The English spelling of a Sanskrit name usually drops the final short a that scholarly transliteration keeps: Vikram is vikrama, Arjun is arjuna. Our guides give both forms and note the retroflex and aspirated consonants that an English reader tends to flatten. A Sanskrit origin says nothing about which community may use a name; these words belong to the whole subcontinent.

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