Indian Baby Names, Baby Names of Indian Origin

Jump to all 111 names ↓

Where Indian baby names come from

Indian baby names cover an enormous linguistic and religious range — India has 22 official languages, hundreds of regional languages and dialects, and four major religious naming traditions (Hindu, Muslim, Sikh, Christian, plus Jain and Buddhist). Names labeled "Indian" in our database typically come from the Sanskrit-Hindu mainstream — the linguistic and religious tradition that has shaped most subcontinental Hindu naming for two thousand years.

The Sanskrit-Hindu tradition is anchored by the Vedic-Puranic religious texts, with names drawn from the iconic Hindu deity pantheon (Krishna, Rama, Shiva, Vishnu, Lakshmi, Saraswati, Durga, Parvati, Ganesha) and the great epic-poem characters (the iconic Arjuna from the Mahabharata, Sita from the Ramayana, Hanuman). The structural feature of Sanskrit names is that they are usually pure-meaning compounds — Aarav = "peaceful, calm," Vihaan = "morning, dawn," Aanya = "limitless, gracious," Saanvi = "goddess Lakshmi." The meaning is usually doing visible philosophical or theological work.

Other major Indian naming traditions include Muslim-Indian (which uses Arabic-Persian names — Aisha, Fatima, Imran, Sufiyan); Sikh (which uses gender-neutral names with Singh/Kaur as the second name — Harpreet, Gurpreet, Manjeet); regional Indian (Tamil, Bengali, Marathi, Punjabi, Telugu, Malayalam, Gujarati each with their distinctive naming patterns); and Indian-Christian (often using Anglicized or Portuguese-derived names from colonial-era missionary work — Joseph, Maria, Thomas).

In contemporary American naming, Indian-origin names have been climbing through the 21st century driven by Indian-American immigration. The current top picks include Arya (cross-listed with the Indo-Iranian root — also a popular contemporary Western name through HBO's Game of Thrones), Milan, Kaliyah, Annika, Opal, Sky, Rohan, India, Aryana, Aarush, and Dhruv. Many Indian names that started with strong Indian-American immigrant adoption (Maya, Aria, Mila, Aaliyah, Aaryan) have crossed broadly into mainstream American naming, often without their original users recognizing the Sanskrit etymology.