Baby Names by Rashi — Hindu Names from Your Baby's Nakshatra Letter

How the akshar is worked out

The zodiac is divided into 27 nakshatras of 13 degrees 20 minutes each, and every nakshatra into four padas of 3 degrees 20 minutes. That gives 108 padas around the sky, and the avakahada chakra assigns one syllable to each: Chu, Che, Cho and La for the four padas of Ashwini, and so on to De, Do, Cha and Chi for Revati. Because nine padas make exactly 30 degrees, every rashi owns nine syllables. Those nine are what people mean by the name letters of a rashi.

The Moon decides which of the 108 applies. It moves through roughly one nakshatra a day and one pada about every six hours, so the birth date alone is not enough: two babies born on the same day can easily fall in different padas, and sometimes in different rashis. The calculation needs the date, the time and the place of birth, which fix the Moon's sidereal longitude. Indian calendars use the Lahiri ayanamsa for this, and so does the helper on this page.

Rashi is the Moon's sign, not the Sun sign

A rashi name has nothing to do with the newspaper star sign. Western Sun-sign columns use the tropical zodiac and the Sun's position, which changes once a month. The rashi used for naming is the sidereal sign holding the Moon, which changes about every two and a quarter days. A baby born in late July is a Cancer by the Sun-sign dates but may have the Moon in any of the twelve rashis, and it is the Moon's rashi, with its pada, that gives the akshar.

The namkaran sanskar

Naming is one of the sixteen sanskars, the rites of passage of a Hindu life. The Grihya Sutras place it on the tenth or twelfth day after birth, once the period of birth impurity has ended, and many families still hold it on the eleventh or twelfth day, while others choose a muhurta later in the first months. In the ceremony the father or an elder speaks the chosen name softly into the baby's right ear, the family repeats it, and the child is blessed.

Many households give two names. The nakshatra name, or janma nama, begins with the akshar and is the one used in horoscopes, rituals and at the temple. The everyday name, the vyavaharik nama, is the one the child is called by, and it may or may not begin with the same letter. Families who want both to match simply pick the everyday name from the akshar's list, which is why letter-wise name lists are so widely searched.

When the letter has few names

Not every syllable in the chakra starts a usable name. Nasal and retroflex sounds such as nga, nya, the retroflex na and sha, and tha begin almost no names, and the retroflex Da and Ta series are far rarer at the start of a name than their dental cousins. Families who draw such a letter usually pick from the other syllables of the same nakshatra, or keep a short janma nama for ritual use and give a fuller everyday name. Each rashi page notes which of its letters carry many names and which carry few.

The lists on this site keep to that discipline. Every name was checked against its rashi's letters using the Devanagari spelling, because the Latin spelling can hide the difference: Deepak begins with the dental da of Revati and Purva Bhadrapada, not the retroflex da of Pushya and Ashlesha, so it belongs to Meen rashi and not to Kark. Where a syllable can be heard two ways, as with the ai in Vaibhav or the ri in Krishna, a name is listed only if both hearings fall in the same rashi.

Beyond the first letter

The akshar is only where the choice begins. Families then weigh the meaning, the sound with the surname, a family deity, and whether the name is easy to say across the languages the child will grow up with. The meanings given here are the commonly accepted ones. A name is a gift and a hope, and tradition offers the letter as a way of tying that gift to the moment of birth, not as a forecast of the life that follows.

How do I find baby names based on date of birth?

Enter the date, time and place of birth in the helper above. It works out the Moon's nakshatra and pada at that moment and shows the matching akshar and rashi; open that rashi to see boy and girl names that begin with its letters.

Why is the birth time needed and not just the date?

The Moon spends only about six hours in each pada and about a day in each nakshatra, so the letter can change during the day of birth. Without the time the result is a guess between two or three syllables; with the time and place it is exact.

Is the rashi for naming the same as my baby's zodiac sign?

No. The rashi used for naming is the sidereal sign the Moon occupied at birth. The common zodiac sign by birth date is the tropical Sun sign, which follows a different rule and usually gives a different sign.

Must the everyday name start with the nakshatra letter?

Tradition asks it of the nakshatra name used in rituals. Many families also choose the everyday name from the same letter, but many keep the two separate; both practices are common in India.

What if the akshar is a letter like nga or nya that starts no names?

A few syllables in the chakra begin practically no names. Families usually choose from the other letters of the same nakshatra, or keep a short ceremonial janma nama and give a separate everyday name.

Where do these letters come from?

From the avakahada chakra, the traditional table of naming syllables printed in Hindi panchangs, which gives one syllable to each of the 108 nakshatra padas. Regional tables differ in a few cells, and the rashi pages note those differences.