nameNames That Mean Moon
Arabic has three words for the moon, and so do several other languages. These names are sorted by which moon they name — crescent, full moon, moonlight — with real etymologies and the errors other lists repeat.
Most languages don't have one word for the moon
English has one, so English-language name lists are built as though every language does. Arabic has at least three in common use: qamar is the moon generally, hilāl is the thin new crescent that begins each month of the Islamic calendar, and badr is the full moon. They produce three separate families of names. Turkish distinguishes ay, the moon, from dolunay, the full moon, from ayça, the crescent, and Arabic has a separate word again for the ring of light around it. Sanskrit has an entire vocabulary of epithets, one of which means hare-marked, because the pattern Europeans read as a face is read in India as a hare.
That is the difference between a name that means the moon and a name that means a particular moon, and it changes what the name says about the person carrying it. A crescent name is a beginning: something thin, new, about to grow. A full-moon name is a peak. A moonlight name is not about the moon at all but about what it does to a room. Sorting these into one alphabetical list, which is what almost every other page on this topic does, throws away the part that was worth knowing.
One more assumption worth dropping first: the moon is not feminine everywhere. It is in Latin and Greek, which is where English got the idea. In Old Norse the moon is a god, Máni, chased across the sky by a wolf while his sister drives the sun. Sanskrit Chandra is male. The Japanese, Chinese and Arabic moon words are used across genders. Each entry below lists how the name is actually used rather than assuming.
Which moon does the name actually name?
Every name on this page, sorted by the moon it names rather than by language. Full entries with etymologies follow below.
| It names | Names |
|---|---|
| crescent moon The new moon's first sliver. In Arabic and Turkish this is a separate word from the moon itself, and it carries its own set of names. | Hilal, Ayça |
| new moon The dark moon, when nothing is visible. Far rarer as a name, and worth knowing when a list treats it as interchangeable with the crescent. | İlkay, Hodesh |
| full moon The moon at its brightest. Several languages name this specifically, and those names read warmer and more generous than the crescent ones. | Pandia, Mochizuki, Myeongwol, Badr, Badriyya, Budur, Dolunay, Purnima, Indumati, Rakesh |
| moonlight Not the moon but the light it throws. These are the softest names in the list. | Noctiluca, Yuehua, Hala, Ayla, Aynur, Mehtap, Mahtab, Chandrika, Chandni, Jyotsna, Kaumudi, Kamaria |
| moon deity Named for a moon god or goddess rather than the object. The deity brings a personality with it, which is either useful or a problem depending on your character. | Selene, Phoebe, Cynthia, Delia, Artemis, Luna, Diana, Máni, Mōna, Tsukuyomi, Chang'e, Wangshu, Mah, Chandra, Soma, Mesyats, Iah, Khonsu |
| the moon The moon in general, with no phase specified. | Selena, Mene, Menodora, Menophilos, Alcmene, Bil, Hjúki, Mena, Tsuki, Tsukiko, Mizuki, Mitsuki, Kaguya, Yue, Chanjuan, Dal, Wol, Qamar, Ay, Aylin, Aysel, Aysu, Ayhan, Aygül, Nuray, Tuncay, Altynai, Aidana, Oybek, Mahsa, Mahnaz, Mahin, Mahvash, Mahrokh, Mahyar, Chandrashekhar, Indu, Somnath, Shashi, Shashank, Mriganka, Himanshu, Sudhakar, Rohini, Levana, Lebanah, Luan, Ahmose, Moon, Monday |
| month / lunar cycle From the moon as a unit of time. Almost every European word for month is a moon word underneath. | Jerah, Mwezi |
| night Night names that lists tend to file under the moon. Included so you can see the difference. | Nishi |
Greek names that mean moon
Greek gives the moon three names that are not quite synonyms. Selene is the moon itself, driving her chariot across the sky. Phoebe means bright, and reached the moon by association with her granddaughter Artemis. Cynthia and Delia are epithets rather than names — both mean the woman from a particular place, Mount Cynthus on Delos, where Artemis was born.
| Name | Used for | Literally | Where it comes from |
|---|---|---|---|
| Selene Σελήνη seh-LEE-nee | female | “moon” moon deity | Greek σελήνη 'moon', from Proto-Hellenic *selasnā, the same stem as σέλας 'light, brightness' — so the Greek word for the moon is built on 'shining'. Selene is the Titan who drives the moon across the sky, sister of Helios (Sun) and Eos (Dawn), and the lover of the sleeping shepherd Endymion. This is the single most literal moon name in any European language. On a character: The default for a lunar sorceress or a moon-priestess; elegant enough to pass as an ordinary modern name. |
| Selena seh-LEH-nuh | female | “moon” the moon | The Latinised and Spanish form of Selene, and the form that actually gets used: Selena Quintanilla and Selena Gomez are why it charts in the United States. Selina and Celina are English respellings of the same word — though Celina also collides with Latin Caelina 'heavenly', which is a different idea. |
| Mene Μήνη MEE-nee | female | “moon” the moon | Greek μήνη, the older poetic word for the moon and a second name for Selene herself; the masculine μήν means 'month'. This is the Greek reflex of the Indo-European moon word *mēh₁n̥s that also gives Latin mensis, English moon and month, and Persian māh — the moon as the measurer of time. |
| Pandia Πανδία pan-DEE-uh | female | “all-brightness” full moon | Greek πᾶν 'all' + δῖος 'divine, bright'. In the Homeric Hymn to Selene, Pandia is the daughter of Zeus and Selene; scholars read her as a personification of the brightness of the full-moon night, and the Athenian festival Pandia appears to have fallen at full moon. Probably an epithet of Selene that hardened into a separate goddess. On a character: A full-moon name that is not a compound of 'moon' — rare and useful. |
| Menodora Μηνοδώρα men-oh-DOR-uh | female | “gift of the moon” the moon | Greek μήνη 'moon' + δῶρον 'gift'. Saint Menodora was a 4th-century martyr killed with her sisters Metrodora and Nymphodora. A genuinely attested ancient personal name built on the moon word, which is rarer than you would expect. |
| Menophilos Μηνόφιλος men-OH-fee-los | male | “friend of the moon” the moon | μήνη 'moon' + φίλος 'friend, lover of'. Attested in Hellenistic and Roman-era Greek inscriptions. Careful: in Anatolia the element Mēn- often refers to Mēn, the Phrygian lunar god worshipped with a crescent behind his shoulders, so the 'moon' here can be the deity rather than the object. |
| Alcmene Ἀλκμήνη alk-MEE-nee | female | “strength of the moon — or simply 'mighty in wrath'” the moon | ἀλκή 'strength' plus either μήνη 'moon' or μῆνις 'wrath'; the two readings are both defended and there is no settled answer, so treat the lunar sense as likely-but-unproven. Alcmene is the mortal mother of Heracles, visited by Zeus in the shape of her own husband during a night Zeus stretched to three times its length. |
| Phoebe Φοίβη FEE-bee | female | “bright, pure, radiant — NOT 'moon'” moon deity | A correction most lists skip: φοίβη means 'bright, pure', the feminine of Phoibos, Apollo's epithet. Phoibe is a Titan and the grandmother of Artemis, and the name became a moon word only because it was used as an epithet of Artemis-as-moon-goddess. There is also a Phoebe in the New Testament (Romans 16:1), a deacon at Cenchreae, and a moon of Saturn. |
| Cynthia Κυνθία SIN-thee-uh | female | “woman from Mount Cynthus” moon deity | Literally a place adjective: Kynthia, 'she of Kynthos', the hill on Delos where Artemis and Apollo were born. It is a lunar name only through Artemis, and by the time Roman poets used Cynthia for the moon the geography had been forgotten. Taken up as an English given name at the Renaissance; Elizabeth I was flattered as Cynthia. |
| Delia Δηλία DEEL-yuh | female | “of Delos” moon deity | The same mechanism as Cynthia: 'the Delian woman', an epithet of Artemis after her birthplace. Popular with 16th- and 17th-century poets, who used Delia and Cynthia interchangeably for the moon. The meaning is the island, not the moon. |
| Artemis Ἄρτεμις AR-tuh-mis | female | “unknown; probably pre-Greek” moon deity | Two honest caveats. First, the etymology is genuinely unknown — proposals include 'safe', 'butcher' and a link to ἄρκτος 'bear', and the name is very likely pre-Greek. Second, Artemis is not originally a moon goddess at all: she is a goddess of the hunt and the wild, and her lunar role is a later identification with Selene, firmly in place only by the Hellenistic period. Anyone glossing Artemis as 'moon' is reporting a syncretism, not a meaning. On a character: Huntress first, moon second — write her that way and the character gets sharper. |
Latin names that mean moon
Luna is the Roman moon, and the word behind lunatic, lunar and the Spanish and Italian given names. The group is small because Latin borrowed most of its lunar vocabulary from Greek, and because two of the names usually filed here — Lucina and Diana's various titles — are about light and childbirth rather than the moon itself. The Roman moon is unambiguously female, which is why English speakers assume every moon name is.
| Name | Used for | Literally | Where it comes from |
|---|---|---|---|
| Luna LOO-nuh | female | “moon” moon deity | Latin luna 'moon', from *louksnā 'the shining one' — the same root as lux and lucere. Worth a nuance: Luna is not always a separate Roman goddess. She has her own temple on the Aventine and a chariot drawn by two horses, but Roman writers also use Luna as an aspect of Diana or Juno, and she appears in the triple-goddess grouping with Diana and Hecate or Proserpina. As a given name Luna is a modern revival, now top-20 in the United States, the Netherlands and Croatia. On a character: Impossible to use neutrally after Luna Lovegood — it now reads dreamy rather than divine. |
| Noctiluca nok-tih-LOO-kuh | female | “she who shines by night” moonlight | Latin nox 'night' + lucere 'to shine'. A real Roman cult title of Luna, who had a shrine as Noctiluca on the Palatine that Varro says was lit up at night. Say it plainly: this is a cult epithet, not an attested personal name — it works as a coinage the way Umbra does, and today it is mostly the genus name of a bioluminescent plankton. |
| Diana dy-AN-uh | female | “divine, heavenly, bright” moon deity | From an Italic *diwyana, from the Indo-European root *dyew- 'sky, daylight' that also gives Zeus, Jupiter and Latin dies 'day'. So Diana literally means 'the bright/divine one' — a daylight word, not a moon word. She is a goddess of the hunt, woodland and childbirth who acquired the moon by identification with Greek Artemis-Selene. The most-cited 'name meaning moon' on the internet is, etymologically, a name meaning 'sky-bright'. |
Sanskrit names that mean moon
Sanskrit has the deepest moon vocabulary of any language here. Chandra is the moon and the moon god, from a root meaning to shine. Purnima is the full moon and the name of the festival day. Rohini is the star the moon is said to love best among his twenty-seven wives. Shashi means hare-marked, because the shape Europeans read as a face is read in India as a hare.
| Name | Used for | Literally | Where it comes from |
|---|---|---|---|
| Chandra चन्द्र CHUN-druh | male | “shining, bright — hence 'the moon'” moon deity | Sanskrit चन्द्र, from the root cand 'to shine', so literally 'the shining one'. Chandra is the moon god, riding a chariot drawn by antelopes, one of the nine Navagraha planets, and a lunar dynasty of kings claims descent from him. Masculine in Sanskrit; the feminine Chandraa exists, and in modern India Chandra is used for both sexes, which surprises people who assume moon names are female. On a character: Grave and royal rather than dreamy — the moon as a king, not as a maiden. |
| Chandrika चन्द्रिका CHUN-dree-kah | female | “moonlight” moonlight | The feminine derivative of chandra, meaning specifically the light of the moon rather than the moon itself, and by extension the moon as a feminine figure. Chandrika Kumaratunga was President of Sri Lanka. |
| Chandni चाँदनी CHAND-nee | female | “moonlight” moonlight | Hindi चाँदनी, descended through Sauraseni Prakrit from Sanskrit candra. Also spelled Chandani, Chaandni. Chandni Chowk in Old Delhi, the 'moonlight square', was laid out by Jahanara Begum around a canal that reflected the moon; the 1989 film Chandni made the name a household word. |
| Chandrashekhar चन्द्रशेखर chun-druh-SHAY-kar | male | “moon-crested; he who wears the moon in his hair” the moon | chandra 'moon' + shekhara 'crest, peak'. An epithet of Shiva, who wears the crescent moon in his matted hair — which is why so many Indian moon names are masculine and Shaivite. Borne by an Indian prime minister and by the astrophysicist Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar, of the Chandrasekhar limit. |
| Indu इन्दु IN-doo | unisex | “a bright drop — hence the moon” the moon | Sanskrit इन्दु, from a root meaning 'to flow, to wet'. In the Vedas it is a drop of soma, and the moon is called indu as the bright drop in the sky — the same identification of moon and soma that runs through Vedic thought. Indira Gandhi's childhood name was Indu. |
| Soma सोम SOH-muh | male | “the pressed juice, the soma drink” moon deity | From Indo-Iranian *sáwHmas, from a root 'to press out' — cognate with Avestan haoma. Soma is first the ritual plant and its juice, and the whole ninth book of the Rigveda is addressed to it; later Soma becomes the moon god and merges with Chandra, the moon being read as the cup of soma that the gods drink down and refill each month. Monday is Somavara. Do not confuse it with Hungarian Soma, which is a dogwood tree. |
| Somnath सोमनाथ SOME-naht | male | “lord of the moon” the moon | soma 'moon' + natha 'lord' — an epithet of Shiva and the name of the great temple in Gujarat, one of the twelve jyotirlingas, repeatedly destroyed and rebuilt. A common masculine name in western and eastern India. |
| Shashi शशी SHUH-shee | unisex | “having a hare” the moon | From śaśa 'hare' — the moon is 'the hare-marked one', because South and East Asia see a hare in the lunar maria where Europe sees a face. A traditional and entirely ordinary word for the moon, and a common unisex Indian name; Shashi Kapoor and Shashi Tharoor are both men. The hare in the moon has its own Buddhist origin story, the Śaśajātaka, in which a hare throws itself into a fire to feed a beggar and is drawn on the moon in memory. On a character: A moon name that carries an animal inside it — good for a trickster or a sacrificial figure. |
| Shashank शशाङ्क shuh-SHAHNK | male | “hare-marked” the moon | śaśa 'hare' + aṅka 'mark, sign' — the same image as Shashi, spelled out. Shashanka was a 7th-century king of Gauda in Bengal, the first independent ruler of the region. |
| Mriganka मृगाङ्क mri-GAHN-kuh | male | “deer-marked” the moon | mṛga 'deer, wild animal' + aṅka 'mark'. The competing reading of the same dark patches — some Sanskrit poets saw a hare there, others a deer, and both epithets became ordinary words for the moon. Also spelled Mrigank, Mriganko. |
| Himanshu हिमांशु hi-MAHN-shoo | male | “cool-rayed, having cold beams” the moon | hima 'cold, snow' (as in Himalaya, 'abode of snow') + aṃśu 'ray'. Indian poetics contrast the moon's cooling rays with the sun's burning ones, and half the Sanskrit moon epithets are built on that opposition — Sheetanshu, Sudhanshu, Himanshu. A common masculine name in North India. |
| Sudhakar सुधाकर soo-DHAH-kar | male | “mine of nectar” the moon | sudhā 'nectar, the drink of immortality' + ākara 'mine, source'. The moon as the vessel of amrita — the same idea as Soma, several centuries later. A standard poetic word for the moon and a normal given name in Andhra Pradesh and Karnataka. |
| Purnima पूर्णिमा POOR-ni-mah | female | “the full moon; the night of the full moon” full moon | From pūrṇa 'full, complete', via Vedic pūrṇamāsa. Not merely a bright moon: purnima is the calendar day of the full moon, and Indian festivals hang off it — Guru Purnima, Sharad Purnima, Buddha Purnima. Widely used as a feminine name in Bengal, Nepal and North India; the Nepali spelling is Poornima. |
| Indumati इन्दुमती in-doo-MAH-tee | female | “full moon” full moon | indu 'moon' + matī. Indumati is a princess in Kalidasa's Raghuvamsha, who chooses Aja as her husband at her swayamvara and later dies when a garland falls from heaven onto her. A literary name that stayed in ordinary use. |
| Rakesh राकेश rah-KAYSH | male | “lord of the full moon” full moon | rākā, the night of the full moon, + īśa 'lord' — so the name of the moon itself, phrased as a title. Extremely common in North India; the cosmonaut Rakesh Sharma, the first Indian in space, is a fitting bearer. Note that it is not related to Ramesh (Rama) or Rajesh (raja, king), despite the rhyme. |
| Rohini रोहिणी ROH-hi-nee | female | “ascending; red” the moon | An honest one: rohiṇī means 'ascending' or 'reddish', not 'moon'. It is the Sanskrit name of the star Aldebaran and of the fourth nakshatra, and Rohini is the favourite of the moon god Chandra's twenty-seven wives, the daughters of Daksha — his lingering with her is what makes the moon wax and wane. So the lunar link is mythological and astronomical rather than etymological. |
| Jyotsna ज्योत्स्ना JYOT-snah | female | “moonlight; a moonlit night” moonlight | Sanskrit ज्योत्स्ना, from jyotis 'light' — the same root as jyotisha, Indian astronomy. It means moonlight specifically, and the bright fortnight of the lunar month is the jyotsnā-pakṣa. Used across India as Jyotsna and Jyotsana. |
| Kaumudi कौमुदी kow-MOO-dee | female | “moonlight — literally 'belonging to the night lotus'” moonlight | From kumuda, the white night-blooming lotus that opens under the moon; kaumudī is therefore 'that which delights the kumuda', i.e. moonlight, and also the autumn full-moon festival. A beautiful piece of Sanskrit logic: the moonlight is named after the flower that answers to it, not the other way round. On a character: The most poetic entry in the set, and the least likely to be on anyone else's list. |
| Nishi निशि NEE-shee | female | “night” night | Included with a flag, because moon lists always sweep it in: niśā / niśi means 'night', not 'moon'. The moon words built on it are the compounds — Nishakar and Nishakant, 'maker of the night' and 'lord of the night', both of which do mean the moon. Nishi alone is a night name. |
Arabic names that mean moon
Arabic makes the distinction this page is built on. Qamar is the moon in general, hilāl is the new crescent that begins each Islamic month, and badr is the full moon. They are three different words and three different sets of names, and putting them in one undifferentiated list loses the meaning.
| Name | Used for | Literally | Where it comes from |
|---|---|---|---|
| Qamar قمر KA-mar | unisex | “the moon” the moon | قمر qamar is the general word for the moon — and, unusually, it has no clear Semitic cognates; the standard reference works call its origin unknown, with a possible distant link to an Akkadian word for whiteness. Used for both sexes, and figuratively for a strikingly beautiful person, exactly as English says 'radiant'. The hero of the Thousand and One Nights tale is Qamar al-Zaman, 'Moon of the Age'. |
| Hilal هلال hi-LAAL | male | “crescent moon” crescent moon | The heart of this page's argument: هلال hilāl is not a synonym of qamar. It names the thin crescent of the young moon specifically — the sighting that begins each Islamic month, and the reason Ramadan starts when it does. Quran 2:189 answers a question about the ahilla, the crescents, calling them fixed times for people. A masculine name in Arabic and unisex in Turkish, where it also evokes the crescent on the flag. On a character: The precise name for a character tied to beginnings, new months, and thin light. |
| Badr بدر BAD-r | male | “full moon” full moon | بدر badr is the full moon and nothing else — the opposite pole from hilāl. It is also the place name of the Battle of Badr in 624, which keeps it in constant use. The compound epithet badr ad-dujā, 'full moon of the darkness', is a stock line of Arabic praise poetry, applied to the Prophet. |
| Badriyya بدرية bad-REE-yah | female | “like the full moon” full moon | The feminine adjective from badr, i.e. 'full-moon-like'. Also transliterated Badria, Badriya, Badriyah. This is how Arabic normally makes a woman's name from a masculine noun — with the -iyya relative ending — so the meaning is 'of the full moon' rather than the object itself. |
| Budur بدور boo-DOOR | female | “full moons (plural of badr)” full moon | A plural used as a singular name — normal in Arabic, where an abstract or intensified sense often sits in the plural. Princess Budur is the heroine of the Thousand and One Nights story of Qamar al-Zaman and Budur, in which two jinn argue over which of the sleeping pair is more beautiful: the Moon of the Age or the Full Moons. |
| Hala هالة HAA-lah | female | “the halo around the moon” moonlight | هالة hāla names the ring of light around the moon, not the moon itself — the phenomenon, and by extension a halo or aura in general. Hala bint Khuwaylid was the sister of Khadija, the Prophet's first wife. A precise word that English has to render with a phrase. |
Persian names that mean moon
Persian mah is the moon and also the month, and it compounds freely: Mahtab is moonlight, Mahsa is like the moon, Mahnaz has the moon's grace. These names carry the register of classical Persian poetry, where the moon is the standard comparison for a beautiful face.
| Name | Used for | Literally | Where it comes from |
|---|---|---|---|
| Mah ماه MAAH | unisex | “moon; month” moon deity | Persian ماه māh, from Old Persian and Avestan māh / Måŋha, from Indo-European *mēh₁n̥s — a direct cognate of English moon and month. Māh is also the Zoroastrian lunar divinity, and the Iranian word is masculine: after the primordial bull is killed, its seed is placed in the moon's keeping. In poetry māh means 'the beloved', exactly as Arabic qamar does. Standalone Mah is a word and an element rather than a common given name; the compounds below are the names. |
| Mahtab مهتاب mah-TAAB | female | “moonlight” moonlight | māh 'moon' + tāb 'shine, glow, radiance' (from tābidan 'to shine'). A current Iranian feminine name and a standard poetic word. Borrowed into Turkish as Mehtap, into Urdu and Hindi as Mahtab, and into Bengali as Mahotab. |
| Mahsa مهسا mah-SAH | female | “like the moon” the moon | māh 'moon' + the comparative suffix -sā 'resembling'. A common modern Iranian name; Mahsa Amini, whose death in custody in 2022 set off nationwide protests in Iran, is now its best-known bearer. |
| Mahnaz مهناز mah-NAAZ | female | “moon delight, moon pride” the moon | māh 'moon' + nāz, a word with no clean English equivalent — coquetry, grace, the pleasure taken in someone. The -nāz ending is a whole family of Persian feminine names (Golnaz, Shahnaz, Parinaz). |
| Mahin مهین mah-HEEN | female | “of the moon, lunar” the moon | The adjective from māh with the relational suffix -īn, so 'moon-like, related to the moon'. Careful: an identical-looking Persian word mahīn means 'greatest', from meh 'great', and the two are frequently confused even in Iran. |
| Mahvash ماهوش mah-VASH | female | “moon-like” the moon | māh 'moon' + -vash 'like, resembling'. The same idea as Mahsa with a different suffix — Persian has at least four productive ways to say 'like the moon', which is itself a fact about the culture. |
| Mahrokh ماهرخ mah-ROKH | female | “moon-faced” the moon | māh 'moon' + rokh 'face, cheek'. 'Moon-faced' is the highest compliment in Persian and Arabic poetry and means a bright, round, unblemished face — not what the English phrase suggests. Compare Turkish Aysima and Azerbaijani Aybəniz, both 'moon-faced'. |
| Mahyar مهیار mah-YAAR | male | “friend of the moon” the moon | Usually parsed as māh 'moon' + yār 'friend, companion'. Flag the uncertainty: many Persian names in Mah-/Meh- come instead from Mihr / Mehr, the god Mithra and the sun, and Mahyar has also been explained that way. Mahyar of Daylam was an 11th-century Arabic-language poet of Persian origin. |
Turkic names that mean moon
Turkish builds moon names productively from ay. Ayla is moonlight and the halo that rings the moon, Aynur pairs ay with the Arabic word for light, Ayça is the crescent, and Dolunay is simply the full moon, used as a name exactly as it stands. This group also holds the single most common mix-up in the topic — Turkish Ayla against Hebrew Ayala, which look identical in English and mean entirely different things. The entry sorts it out.
| Name | Used for | Literally | Where it comes from |
|---|---|---|---|
| Ay Ay EYE | unisex | “moon; month” the moon | Turkish and Old Turkic ay 'moon', and also 'month'. This one element generates more given names than any other moon word on earth — Turkish, Azerbaijani, Kazakh, Kyrgyz, Uzbek, Uyghur and Turkmen together produce well over a hundred. On its own Ay is a word rather than a name; it lives at the front or back of compounds, which is why the list below is so long. |
| Ayla Ayla EYE-lah | female | “moonlight; the halo around the moon” moonlight | The most useful correction on this page. Turkish Ayla, from ay 'moon', means 'moonlight, halo' — but the identical-looking Hebrew Ayala / Ayelet means 'doe, gazelle' (from ayal 'deer'), and Ayla is also used as a transcription of Hebrew Ela 'oak, terebinth'. Three unrelated names, one spelling. English-language lists routinely give the Hebrew name the Turkish meaning. The Ayla of Jean Auel's Clan of the Cave Bear is a novelist's invention with no stated etymology at all. On a character: Soft and modern; the moonlight sense only lands if the story is Turkish-flavoured. |
| Aylin Aylin eye-LEEN | female | “elaborated form of ay, 'moon'” the moon | Turkish, Azerbaijani and Kazakh, an extended form of ay with the -lin ending found in a small family of modern names (compare Ayliz). Currently one of the most popular girls' names in Azerbaijan and Turkey. It is a formation, not a compound: the -lin does not mean anything on its own. |
| Aysel Aysel eye-SEL | female | “pure moon” the moon | From ay 'moon' + Old Turkic silig 'clean, pure, beautiful'. Widely misparsed on English sites as ay + sel 'flood', because modern Turkish sel does mean a flood — a plausible-looking folk etymology that the Turkic historical dictionaries do not support. |
| Aynur Aynur eye-NOOR | female | “moonlight” moonlight | Turkish ay 'moon' + Arabic nur 'light' — a hybrid of a Turkic and an Arabic element, which is completely normal in Turkish naming. Used across Turkey, Azerbaijan and the Uyghur regions; the Uyghur singer Aynur is a well-known bearer. |
| Ayça Ayça eye-CHAH | female | “little moon; crescent moon” crescent moon | ay 'moon' with the diminutive-and-likeness suffix -ça, giving 'the small moon' — the crescent. Turkish has a separate borrowed word for it too (hilal), so a Turkish speaker has both a native and an Arabic word for the crescent and uses both as names. |
| Aysu Aysu eye-SOO | female | “moon water” the moon | ay 'moon' + su 'water'. Turkish moon compounds pair the moon with almost anything concrete — water, roses, silver, bronze, khans — and the result is read as a compliment rather than as a riddle. |
| Dolunay Dolunay doh-loo-NIGH | female | “full moon” full moon | dolu 'full' + ay 'moon' — a plain, transparent modern Turkish word used directly as a feminine given name; the actress Dolunay Soysert is a bearer. Turkish is comfortable using an everyday noun as a name in a way English is not, which is why 'Full Moon' works there and would not work here. |
| İlkay İlkay eel-KY | unisex | “first moon — the new moon” new moon | ilk 'first' + ay 'moon', i.e. the new moon at the start of the lunar month, and by extension 'first month'. Unisex; the footballer İlkay Gündoğan is the best-known bearer, and his surname means 'the day the sun rises'. Genuine new-moon names are scarce worldwide, which makes this one worth having. |
| Ayhan Ayhan eye-HAHN | male | “moon khan” the moon | ay 'moon' + han, the Turkic title khan. In Oghuz legend Ay Khan is one of the six sons of Oghuz Khagan, alongside Gün Khan (Sun) and Yıldız Khan (Star) — so the name sits inside a real dynastic myth. Used for men, and occasionally for women, in Turkey. |
| Aygül Aygül eye-GUEL | female | “moon rose” the moon | ay 'moon' + Persian gül 'rose, flower'. One of the most widespread names across the whole Turkic world — Turkish, Uyghur, Kazakh (Aigül), Tatar and Bashkir. Another Turkic-Persian hybrid. |
| Nuray Nuray noor-EYE | female | “bright moon” the moon | Arabic nur 'light' + ay 'moon' — the mirror image of Aynur, with the same two elements in the opposite order and a slightly different sense. That reversibility is a real feature of Turkish compounding, not a coincidence. |
| Tuncay Tuncay toon-JY | male | “bronze moon” the moon | tunç 'bronze' + ay 'moon'. A masculine Turkish name; the footballer Tuncay Şanlı is the familiar bearer. The colour is the point — a bronze moon is the low, reddened moon near the horizon. On a character: A warrior's moon name rather than a maiden's — useful for balancing a cast. |
| Altynai Алтынай al-tuh-NIGH | female | “golden moon” the moon | Kazakh and Kyrgyz altyn 'gold' + ai 'moon'. Altynai is the heroine of Chinghiz Aitmatov's novella The First Teacher, which fixed the name in Central Asian literary memory. Kazakh alone supplies dozens of ai- names: Aidana 'wise moon', Aiman 'my moon', Aigerim, Aizere 'golden moon'. |
| Aidana Айдана eye-dah-NAH | female | “wise moon” the moon | Kazakh and Kyrgyz ai 'moon' + dana 'wise' (ultimately Persian dānā). Very common in Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan and almost unknown in Western name lists, which stop at Turkish. |
| Oybek Oybek OY-bek | male | “moon chieftain” the moon | Uzbek oy 'moon' (the same word as Turkish ay) + bek, a title meaning chief or lord. Oybek was the pen name of the Uzbek novelist Musa Tashmuhamedov. The Kazakh and Kyrgyz cognate is Aibek. |
| Mehtap Mehtap meh-TAHP | female | “moonlight” moonlight | Turkish, inherited through Ottoman Turkish from Classical Persian mahtāb 'moonlight'. Listed under Turkic because it is used as a Turkish given name; the word itself is Persian, and the Persian form Mahtab is a separate entry below. A neat demonstration that a name's language of use and its language of origin are different questions. |
Japanese names that mean moon
Japanese tsuki 月 is both the moon and the month. It appears as an element far more often than as a standalone name, and the character it is paired with does most of the work. Some famous moon names are literary rather than everyday, and the entries say which.
| Name | Used for | Literally | Where it comes from |
|---|---|---|---|
| Tsuki 月 TSOO-kee | female | “moon” the moon | 月 tsuki, the ordinary Japanese noun for the moon and also for a month. As a standalone given name it is rare and modern; the character overwhelmingly appears inside compound names. The on'yomi reading is getsu or gatsu — Getsuyōbi 月曜日 is Monday, the moon's day, exactly as in English. |
| Tsukiko 月子 TSOO-kee-koh | female | “moon child” the moon | 月 'moon' + 子 'child', the classic -ko pattern of Japanese feminine names. A real, if old-fashioned, given name — the -ko ending peaked in the mid-20th century and has been falling ever since. |
| Mizuki 美月 mee-ZOO-kee | female | “beautiful moon (when written 美月)” the moon | The correction that matters for this name: Mizuki is a moon name only in some spellings. 美月 is 'beautiful moon', but the most common kanji for Mizuki is 瑞希, 'auspicious omen' + 'hope', which contains no moon at all, and 水城 'water castle' is a surname. Japanese names are chosen by characters, not by sound, so 'Mizuki means beautiful moon' is true perhaps half the time. |
| Mitsuki 美月 mee-TSOO-kee | female | “beautiful moon; light moon” the moon | Usually 美月 'beautiful moon' or 光月 'light moon'; 三月 would instead read 'third month'. Same caveat as Mizuki — the reading and the characters are separable, and the same written name can be read either way. |
| Mochizuki 望月 moh-chee-ZOO-kee | unisex | “full moon; the fifteenth night of the lunar month” full moon | 望月 mochizuki is the specific word for the full moon — properly the moon of the fifteenth night, and especially the mid-autumn full moon. It is a genuine Japanese surname, not a given name; the Mochizuki of Shinano were a medieval horse-breeding clan. Fujiwara no Michinaga's famous 1018 poem compares his power to the mochizuki that lacks nothing. On a character: Reads as a clan or house name — which is exactly what it is. |
| Tsukuyomi 月読 tsoo-koo-YOH-mee | male | “moon reading, moon counting” moon deity | 月 'moon' + 読み 'reading, counting' — the god who counts out the months. Tsukuyomi is the Shinto moon deity, born from Izanagi's right eye, brother of Amaterasu (the sun) and Susanoo; Amaterasu refuses to look at him again after he kills the food goddess Ukemochi, which is why sun and moon are never in the sky together. Japanese, like Norse, gives the moon to a male god and the sun to a goddess. |
| Kaguya かぐや kah-GOO-yah | female | “shining, radiant — not 'moon'” the moon | Flagged as literary, not etymological. Nayotake no Kaguya-hime, 'Shining Princess of the Supple Bamboo', is the heroine of Taketori Monogatari, the Tale of the Bamboo Cutter, written in the late 9th or early 10th century and often called Japan's oldest prose narrative. She is found inside a glowing bamboo stalk and at the end returns to the Moon, which is where the lunar association comes from — the name itself is from kagayaku 'to shine'. Japan's lunar orbiter was named Kaguya for the same reason. On a character: The archetype of the being who must leave for the moon — a whole plot compressed into a name. |
Chinese names that mean moon
Chinese yuè 月 is the moon and the month, the same doubling as Japanese. The moon goddess Chang'e gave her name to the lunar programme that landed on the far side, which is a rare case of mythology and spaceflight sharing a name.
| Name | Used for | Literally | Where it comes from |
|---|---|---|---|
| Yue 月 yweh | unisex | “moon; month” the moon | 月 yuè, a pictogram of a crescent, meaning both 'moon' (literary) and 'month' (everyday). Used as a given-name element far more than as a whole name — 月华 Yuèhuá 'moonlight', 月明 Yuèmíng 'bright moon'. Do not confuse it with the surname Yue 岳 'peak' (as in the general Yue Fei) or 越, the ancient state. |
| Chang'e 嫦娥 chahng-UH | female | “the beautiful one named Chang” moon deity | The Chinese moon goddess, who swallowed the elixir of immortality and floated to the moon, leaving her husband the archer Yi behind; she is honoured at the Mid-Autumn Festival. The etymology carries a piece of history: the earlier form is 姮娥 Héng'é, changed to Chang'e to avoid the taboo on the personal name of Emperor Wen of Han, Liu Heng. China's lunar programme is named after her. |
| Chanjuan 婵娟 chahn-JWAHN | female | “graceful, lovely — and, in poetry, the moon” the moon | 婵娟 chánjuān means 'graceful, beautiful woman' and, as a literary figure, the moon itself. Su Shi's Mid-Autumn ci of 1076 ends with the line every Chinese schoolchild knows, wishing that people far apart may share the same chanjuan. Classical Chinese has a whole vocabulary of moon kennings like this — 蟾宮 'toad palace', 玉兔 'jade hare'. |
| Wangshu 望舒 wahng-SHOO | female | “the one who unfurls the gaze” moon deity | 望舒 Wàngshū, the charioteer who drives the moon across the sky, named in Qu Yuan's Li Sao in the Chuci (3rd century BC). Distinct from Chang'e, who lives on the moon rather than driving it. Adopted as a pen name by the modern poet Dai Wangshu, and as the Chinese name of an exoplanet. |
| Yuehua 月华 yweh-HWAH | female | “moonlight; the moon's radiance” moonlight | 月 'moon' + 华 'splendour, flower', a poetic word for moonlight and for the lunar corona. A real, if literary, given-name combination. Note that 华 by itself is 'China, splendour' and is common in names for that reason, so the moon sense depends entirely on the first character. |
Korean names that mean moon
Korean given names are built from hanja blocks, so the moon appears as an element inside a name rather than as a name on its own. The entries name the element rather than pretending otherwise.
| Name | Used for | Literally | Where it comes from |
|---|---|---|---|
| Dal 달 DAHL | unisex | “moon; month” the moon | 달 dal is the native Korean word for both the moon and a month, from Middle Korean tól. Be honest about its status: it is a common noun, not a traditional given name. It appears in the modern 'pure Korean' naming fashion and in compounds — 달빛 dalbit 'moonlight', 보름달 boreumdal 'full moon', 초승달 choseungdal 'crescent'. |
| Wol 월 月 WUHL | unisex | “moon (Sino-Korean)” the moon | The Sino-Korean reading of 月, used inside names and words rather than alone: 월요일 woryoil 'Monday', and given names like 명월 or 월화. Korean has two full sets of number and calendar words, native and Sino-Korean, and the moon is one of the words that exists in both — dal and wol. |
| Myeongwol 명월 明月 MYUNG-wol | female | “bright moon — idiomatically the full moon” full moon | 明 'bright' + 月 'moon'. In Korean 명월 conventionally means the full moon, not merely a bright one. Its famous bearer is Hwang Jini, the 16th-century Kaesong gisaeng, poet and musician, whose professional name was Myeongwol — she plays on it in her best-known sijo. An art name rather than a birth name, which is worth stating. |
Old Norse moon names — and why the moon is male
The Norse moon is male. Máni is a god who drives the moon across the sky, pursued by a wolf, and his sister Sól drives the sun. Any list that assumes moon names are automatically feminine is applying a Roman idea to a language that did not share it.
| Name | Used for | Literally | Where it comes from |
|---|---|---|---|
| Máni Máni MOW-nee | male | “moon” moon deity | Old Norse máni 'moon', cognate with English moon. The point most lists miss: in Norse myth the moon is male and the sun is female. Máni is the brother of Sól, both children of Mundilfari, and he steers the moon's course and its waxing and waning while the wolf Hati chases him; at Ragnarök the wolf catches him. Attested in both the Poetic and the Prose Edda. On a character: Use him to break the reflex that moon = feminine. A male moon and a female sun rewires a whole pantheon. |
| Bil Bil BIL | female | “moment, instant (uncertain)” the moon | Snorri lists Bil among the goddesses; she and her brother Hjúki were taken up from the earth by Máni while carrying a water pail, and they follow the moon. Some scholars (Holtsmark and others) read the pair as the waning and waxing moon, and the same image may lie behind Jack and Jill. Flagged as uncertain: the lunar reading is a scholarly proposal, and Bil's own etymology, usually 'instant, moment', is not settled. |
| Hjúki Hjúki HYOO-kee | male | “possibly 'the one returning to health'” the moon | Bil's brother, taken by Máni in the same episode. Jacob Grimm connected the pair to the figures Swedish tradition sees in the moon's spots, carrying a bucket on a pole. Same caveat as Bil — the moon-phase reading is an interpretation, not a translation, and Hjúki may be Snorri's own elaboration. |
Celtic and Gaelic names that mean moon
This is the emptiest group on the page, and that is the finding. Irish and Scottish Gaelic have perfectly good words for the moon — gealach, ré, éasca — and none of them became a given name. Irish Luan is the exception, and it means Monday as much as it means the moon. Everything else offered as a Celtic moon name is covered in the corrections below.
| Name | Used for | Literally | Where it comes from |
|---|---|---|---|
| Luan Luan LOO-un | male | “light, radiance; Monday, 'the moon's day'” the moon | Irish lúan, from Proto-Celtic *louxsnos, from Indo-European *lowksneh₂ 'moon, shining thing' — the same word as Latin luna. But be precise about what it means in Irish: the dictionaries give 'light, radiance' and 'Monday' (Dé Luain, calqued on dies Lunae), and in modern Irish it is a halo. The ordinary Irish word for the moon is gealach, 'the bright one', from geal 'white'. Also note the unrelated Albanian Luan, which means 'lion', and the Brazilian Luan, which is a modern coinage — three different names sharing a spelling. Celtic is genuinely poor in moon given names, and that is the honest finding. |
Hebrew names that mean moon
Hebrew yareach is the moon and levana is the white one, an epithet for it. The lunar calendar sits underneath the whole language, so month and new-moon words are close relatives here.
| Name | Used for | Literally | Where it comes from |
|---|---|---|---|
| Levana לְבָנָה leh-VAH-nah | female | “the white one — a poetic word for the moon” the moon | From לָבָן lavan 'white', the root also behind Laban and Lebanon (named for its snow). Hebrew has two moon words: the everyday yareach and the poetic levana, 'the white one', which is the one used in the Kiddush Levana, the monthly blessing on the new moon. A current Israeli feminine name. |
| Lebanah לְבָנָה leh-BAH-nah | male | “moon (the white one)” the moon | The same word, and a real Old Testament personal name — the head of a family of temple servants who returned from Babylon (Ezra 2:45, Nehemiah 7:48). It is masculine there, which makes the Hebrew moon word one of the few that is attested as a man's name and as a woman's name in the same language. |
| Jerah יֶרַח JEE-rah | male | “moon; lunar month” month / lunar cycle | Hebrew יֶרַח yerach, the ordinary word for the moon and for a month, cognate with Aramaic and Ugaritic yrḫ and with the Canaanite moon god Yarikh of Ugarit. Jerah is a son of Joktan in the table of nations (Genesis 10:26), listed beside Hazarmaveth and Sheba — a South Arabian tribal name. So yes, the plain Hebrew word for the moon is attested as a personal name; it is just very old. |
| Hodesh חֹדֶשׁ KHO-desh | female | “new moon; month” new moon | From the root ḥ-d-sh 'to be new' — the new moon is literally 'the new one', and the same word became 'month'. Rosh Chodesh, 'head of the month', is the minor festival of the new moon. Hodesh is a wife of Shaharaim in 1 Chronicles 8:9, in a genealogy full of names that are otherwise calendar words. One of the very few genuine new-moon names anywhere. |
Slavic names that mean moon
Slavic languages kept their own moon words, but those words stayed common nouns: Polish księżyc, Russian mesyats, Croatian mjesec are not given names, whatever a list may claim. Mesyats survives as a folkloric personification, and that is the honest entry.
| Name | Used for | Literally | Where it comes from |
|---|---|---|---|
| Mesyats Месяц MYEH-syats | male | “moon; month” moon deity | Proto-Slavic *měsęcь, from Indo-European *mēh₁n̥s — the same word as English moon and month, and in Slavic it still means both. In East Slavic folk song the moon is personified as Mesyats, usually male and paired with the sun as husband or brother. Flagged as a word and a folklore figure, not a given name: the Slavic languages have no native moon name and simply borrow Luna, which is now genuinely popular in Croatia and Slovenia. |
African names that mean moon
These come from unrelated languages, so each entry names the specific one. Ancient Egyptian gives the strongest set: Iah is the moon itself and a male god, Khonsu is the moon named for its nightly crossing of the sky rather than for its light, and Ahmose means the moon is born — the name of the pharaoh who founded the Eighteenth Dynasty. Swahili has both a native Bantu word and an Arabic loan, and the entries keep them apart.
| Name | Used for | Literally | Where it comes from |
|---|---|---|---|
| Iah jꜥḥ YAH | male | “moon” moon deity | Ancient Egyptian jꜥḥ, the word for the moon and the god who is the moon itself, distinct from Thoth and Khonsu who govern it. Male, like the Norse and Japanese moon. The word survives in Coptic as ooh. Filed under African as ancient Egyptian; it is not an Arabic name and has nothing to do with Hebrew Yah. |
| Ahmose jꜥḥ-ms AH-mohs | male | “Iah is born, the Moon is born” the moon | Iah, the moon, + mes 'is born' — the same -mose element as in Thutmose and Ramose. Ahmose I expelled the Hyksos and founded the Eighteenth Dynasty around 1550 BC; his queen Ahmose-Nefertari was deified and worshipped for centuries. A properly historical name that plainly means 'the Moon is born'. On a character: Real, ancient, pronounceable and unmistakably lunar — the best 'serious' moon name for a king. |
| Khonsu ḫnsw KHON-soo | male | “traveller, wanderer” moon deity | Egyptian ḫnsw, from a verb 'to cross, to traverse' — the moon named for its nightly journey across the sky, not for its light. Son of Amun and Mut at Thebes, where he has a large temple at Karnak; he marks time with Thoth, protects night travellers from wild animals, and his crescent was linked to conception and fertility. Modern readers meet him through Marvel's Moon Knight. |
| Kamaria kah-mah-REE-ah | female | “moonlight; like the moon” moonlight | A Comorian and Swahili name from Arabic qamar 'moon' — one of a large group of Arabic words that entered Swahili along the Indian Ocean trade routes. Often glossed on Western sites simply as 'Swahili for moonlight', which understates that it is a borrowing, not a Bantu word. |
| Mwezi m-WEH-zee | unisex | “moon; month” month / lunar cycle | Swahili mwezi (plural miezi), from Proto-Bantu *mʊ̀jédì — the native Bantu word, as opposed to the Arabic loan behind Kamaria. Flagged honestly: it is a common noun and not a given name in Swahili, and in some registers it also means menstruation. The Zulu and Xhosa equivalent inyanga likewise means moon, month and — from a different root — a traditional healer. |
Germanic names that mean moon
Old English mōna was masculine too, exactly like Norse Máni, and it is where Monday comes from — Mōnandæg, the moon's day, a straight translation of Latin dies Lunae. The Gothic form is the oldest written Germanic word for the moon we have, from Wulfila's fourth-century Bible. Neither is really a given name, and both entries say so; they are here as evidence of how far back the male moon goes in this language family.
| Name | Used for | Literally | Where it comes from |
|---|---|---|---|
| Mōna Mōna MOH-nah | male | “moon” moon deity | Old English mōna 'moon' — and, like Norse Máni, grammatically and mythologically masculine; Mōnandæg, 'moon's day', is Monday. The Proto-Germanic *mēnô descends from Indo-European *mēh₁n̥s, from the root 'to measure': the moon is named for measuring out the month. Not a given name in Old English, but the reason English has a masculine moon in Bede and in the Anglo-Saxon dialogues. |
| Mena 𐌼𐌴𐌽𐌰 MEE-na | male | “moon” the moon | Gothic mena 'moon' (Wulfila's Bible, 4th century) — the oldest written Germanic form of the word, alongside menoþs 'month'. Included as evidence, not as a name: no Gothic person is recorded with it, and the modern feminine Mena is a short form of names like Philomena, which has nothing to do with the moon. |
Modern English moon names
English has almost no native moon names, which is the surprise of this topic. The word itself survives in a weekday and a handful of direct uses; everything English speakers think of as a moon name — Luna, Selena, Aylin — was borrowed from somewhere else. The names that get invented to fill the gap are covered in the corrections section below.
| Name | Used for | Literally | Where it comes from |
|---|---|---|---|
| Moon MOON | unisex | “moon” the moon | Old English mōna, from Proto-Germanic *mēnô, from the Indo-European root 'to measure'. Rare but real as an English given name and used as a stage name. Two corrections: the English surname Moon is usually from the Norman place name Moyon in Normandy, and the Korean surname Moon (문) is written 文 and means 'writing, letters' — Moon Jae-in's name contains no moon at all. |
| Monday MUN-day | unisex | “moon's day” the moon | Old English Mōnandæg, a calque of Latin dies Lunae — and through it of Greek hēmera Selēnēs. Genuinely used as a rare English given name, and as a day name in several West African naming traditions in translation. Every European Monday is the moon's day: lundi, lunes, lunedì, Irish Dé Luain, Russian ponedelnik being the exception. |
Names commonly listed as meaning moon (that don't)
These appear on moon name lists everywhere. Each is a real name worth using, but not for this meaning. Most of the errors come from one name being confused with another that looks similar in English spelling.
| Name | Commonly claimed | What it actually means |
|---|---|---|
| Mona | moon | Three real origins, none of them lunar: an anglicisation of Irish Muadhnait, 'little noble one'; a name felt to relate to Greek monos, 'one, alone'; and Italian ma donna, 'my lady', as in Mona Lisa. The moon gloss appears to be pure sound-association with Latin luna and Old English mona — and while the Old English word really does mean moon, no English Mona descends from it. |
| Ayala / Ayelet | moonlight, halo (borrowed from Turkish Ayla) | Hebrew ayal 'deer': Ayala is 'doe' and Ayelet is 'gazelle', as in ayelet ha-shachar, 'the morning star', literally 'the gazelle of the dawn'. Turkish Ayla is a separate name that does mean moonlight. Two languages, one sound, and the meanings get swapped constantly. |
| Munir / Munira | moon | Arabic munīr 'bright, shining', from the root n-w-r 'to illuminate' — the root of nur 'light', not of qamar 'moon'. It is a light name, and Arabic has perfectly good moon names it is not one of. |
| Layla / Leila | night, and therefore moon | Arabic layl 'night'. A night name, not a moon name — the moon is not in it. Listed on our shadow page, where it belongs. |
| Mizuki (瑞希) | beautiful moon | Only 美月 means 'beautiful moon'. The commonest kanji for Mizuki is 瑞希, 'auspicious omen' + 'hope', with no lunar element whatsoever. In Japanese the characters, not the sound, carry the meaning. |
| Akari | moonlight | Japanese akari 明かり is 'light, brightness' in general (or 朱莉, 'vermilion jasmine', as a name). Any moon is imported by wishful translation. |
| Tsukasa | moon | 司 'director, official' or 主, from a word for one in charge. It starts with tsu-, and that is the whole resemblance. |
| Ayşe / Aisha | moon (because of the ay-) | Arabic ʿĀʾisha, 'living, alive', the name of the Prophet's wife. It reached Turkish as Ayşe, where the first syllable happens to look like ay 'moon'. The most popular female name in Turkish history is not a moon name. |
| Aydın | moon, moonlight | Turkish aydın 'bright, enlightened; an intellectual'. It shares a distant Proto-Turkic ancestry with ay but is not formed from it, and modern Turks read it as 'enlightened', not 'lunar'. |
| Mehr / Mehran / Mehrdad | Persian moon names because of the meh- | These are Mihr / Mithra names — the sun and the god of covenant. Persian moon names begin with māh, not mehr. Mehrdad is 'given by Mithra', the exact counterpart of Greek Mithridates. |
| Arianrhod | Welsh moon goddess, 'silver wheel' = the moon | The etymology 'silver wheel' is defensible, but the moon-goddess identity is not in the medieval Welsh sources at all; it comes from Robert Graves and later neopagan writing. Her Caer Arianrhod is the Welsh name for Corona Borealis, a constellation, not the moon. |
| Gealach, Éasca, Ré | Irish moon names | The genuine Irish words for the moon — gealach 'the bright one', éasca, and the poetic ré — but none of them is used as a personal name. Irish simply does not have a moon given name, and the closest thing is Luan, which really means 'light, Monday'. |
| Ilargi | African, sometimes Celtic, name meaning moon | It is Basque — ilargi, 'moon', literally 'light of the dead' or 'month-light' depending on which analysis you accept. Basque is a language isolate in the Pyrenees, related to nothing on this page, and lists that file it under African or Celtic are simply wrong. |
| Księżyc, Mesiats, Mjesec | Slavic moon names | Words, not names. Polish księżyc is worth knowing anyway: it originally meant 'the prince's son', from ksiądz 'prince', because Slavic tradition made the moon the son of the sun. Slavic speakers who want a moon name use Luna. |
| Hecate / Trivia | moon goddess names | Hekate's name relates to hekatos, 'far-shooting' or 'far-off'; Trivia is Latin for 'of the three ways', a crossroads epithet. Both were folded into the lunar triple goddess in later antiquity, but neither name means moon. |
| Lucina | moon goddess of the Romans | From lux 'light' — 'she who brings the child into the light', a childbirth title of Juno and of Diana. A birth-and-light name that got shelved with the moon because Diana carried it. |
| Helen / Selena confusion | Helen means moon, from Selene | Helen's etymology is unknown; the popular links are to helenē 'torch' or selēnē 'moon', and neither is accepted. Selene and Helen are not the same name, and Helen should not be sold as a moon name. |
| Nanna | moon goddess | Two unrelated figures. Sumerian Nanna is genuinely the moon god of Ur — and male. Norse Nanna, the wife of Baldr, has a disputed etymology (a reduplicated child-word, or nanþ- 'daring') and no lunar role at all. The Sumerian meaning gets attached to the Norse name constantly. |
| Crescent, Lunette, Moonbeam | moon names | English common nouns dressed as names. Crescent is from Latin crescere 'to grow' — the crescent is the growing moon, so it strictly names the waxing phase only. None of them has any tradition of use, unlike Luna and Moon, which do. |
| Tara, Sheetal, Nishant, Roshni | Indian moon names | Tara is 'star'; Sheetal is 'cool, calm' (moon-adjacent in poetry, but not the moon); Nishant is 'night's end', i.e. dawn; Roshni is Persian-derived 'light'. Sanskrit has dozens of real moon epithets and none of these is one. |
| Chandler, Chandra confusion | Chandler means moon | Chandler is Old French chandelier, a candle-maker. The resemblance to Sanskrit chandra is accidental — the French word is from Latin candela, the Sanskrit from cand 'to shine', and although both roots ultimately descend from the same Indo-European family, the English surname is about candles. |
Choosing one for a character
Pick the phase before the language. A character at the start of something, or one who is underestimated, carries a crescent name well. A character at the height of their power, or one a community gathers around, suits a full-moon name. Moonlight names belong to characters who work indirectly: healers, spies, anyone whose effect on a scene is atmospheric rather than forceful. Deity names come with a personality already attached, and readers who know the mythology will apply it whether you want them to or not.
Then check the register. Greek and Latin moon names have been used in English for centuries and read as normal names now, which makes them safe but unsurprising. Sanskrit, Persian and Arabic names carry the poetry they come from and deserve a setting that earns them. Japanese and Chinese moon words work as elements inside longer names rather than alone, so a character called simply Tsuki reads like a fantasy name rather than a Japanese one — fine if that is the intention, worth knowing if it is not.
A practical note: moon names are common enough now that Luna in particular arrives with associations already attached. That is not a reason to avoid it, but if you want the reader to think about the moon rather than about a character they have already met, the less-used names in the tables above do more work.
FAQ about names that mean moon
What Greek name means moon?
Selene is the moon itself — a Titan goddess who drives the moon across the sky, and the direct source of the modern Selena and Selina. Phoebe means bright rather than moon, and became lunar by association with Artemis. Cynthia and Delia are both epithets meaning the woman from Delos, where Artemis was born, rather than words for the moon.
Are there names that mean moonlight rather than the moon?
Yes, and they are worth separating. Persian Mahtab is moonlight directly. Turkish Aynur is moon-light and Aylin is the halo that rings the moon. These read gentler than names for the object itself, which is useful when you want the association without the weight of a goddess attached.
Which names mean crescent moon specifically?
Arabic hilāl gives Hilal, the new crescent that marks the start of each Islamic month, and it is genuinely a different word from qamar, the moon in general. This page sorts every name by which moon it names, so the crescent group is listed on its own rather than mixed in.
Are moon names only for girls?
No, and the assumption comes from Latin. Roman Luna and Greek Selene are female, so English speakers inherited a feminine moon. Old Norse Máni is a god, Sanskrit Chandra is male, and the Arabic, Japanese and Chinese moon words are used across genders. Each entry lists how the name is actually used in its own language.
Does Mona mean moon?
Usually not. Mona is generally either the Irish Muadhnait, from a root meaning noble, or a short form of names like Monica and Ramona. It appears on moon name lists constantly, which is how an error becomes a fact. The section on names commonly listed as meaning moon covers this and the other frequent offenders.
Can I use one of these for a fantasy or D&D character?
Yes, and the fiction note on each entry is written for that. Moon names suit clerics, druids, witches and anyone tied to cycles or prophecy, and the phase matters: a crescent name reads as a beginning, a full-moon name as a peak, a moonlight name as something quieter. The generators at the bottom of this page build full names around these roots.
Sources
Every etymology on this page was checked against reference works rather than other name lists. Where sources disagree, the entry says so.
- Behind the Name — names by meaning: moon
- Theoi Project — Selene, the Titan goddess of the moon
- Wiktionary — Arabic هلال (hilāl)
- Wiktionary — Arabic بدر (badr)
- Wiktionary — Sanskrit चन्द्र (candra)
- Wikipedia — Máni, the Norse moon god
- Wikipedia — Chang'e, the Chinese moon goddess
- Wikipedia — The Tale of the Bamboo Cutter (Kaguya-hime)
Generators that use these names
Every tool below is free and needs no sign-up.
Witch Witch names by craft, coven and epithet. 
Elf Every elven branch in one place — pick a subtype or browse them all. 
Fae Use-names and true names — Seelie, Unseelie, and Wild fae. 
Japanese Real Japanese names with their meanings. 
Druid Names half ancient tongue, half wild nature. 
Goddess Divine female names and domains.