2,936 Names of Persian Origin

What counts as a Persian name here

A published name belongs to this page when any part of its origin label matches the word "persian". Labels that also mention another language, for example Arabic + Turkic, count here too.

1,331 of the 2,936 names have only Persian parts. The other 1,605 combine Persian with Turkic (880), Arabic (732) and Hebrew (8), so they also appear on those origin pages.

Background: Persian names in Turkic languages

Persian was the language of courts, poetry and trade across much of the Turkic-speaking world for centuries, and its vocabulary entered Turkic naming through words for flowers, jewels, beauty and rulership. Many Persian names are compounds of two words, such as a flower or a jewel joined to a word for a person or a quality.

In our data Persian origin often appears together with Arabic or Turkic in one record, because a single name can join parts from different languages. Those names are counted under each origin that appears in the record, which is why the origin groups overlap.

Which languages use Persian names

Persian names are recorded most often for Turkish (1,210 names), Uyghur (1,004 names) and Kazakh (448 names). In all, 10 languages have at least one Persian name in our data. A name used in several languages is counted once for each, so these numbers add up to more than 2,936.

Use the language buttons above the list to see only one language; they appear when the language has at least 12 Persian names.

What Persian names mean

By documented meaning theme, Persian names fall most often under flowers (499), life and soul (220), leadership and nobility (208) and beauty (169). Of the 2,936 names, 1,158 (39 percent) have a Documented meaning, 102 are Likely and 1,676 are Editorial.

Building blocks that recur in these names include gül (rose; flower), can (soul; life), nur (light) and ay (moon; month); each one links to its own page with the other names that use it.

Girl, boy and unisex Persian names

The list holds 1,468 girl names, 1,166 boy names and 302 unisex names. Gender is recorded per language, so a name that is unisex in one language can be used for one gender only in another; the table on each name page shows this.

Choosing a Persian name

Persian names are often built from familiar words, which makes the meaning easy to check from the building blocks. Open the name elements linked from a name page to see how the parts combine, and compare spellings, because the same Persian letters are written differently in Arabic script, Cyrillic and Latin.

Questions and answers