Names That Mean Star
Vega, Altair and Rigel are Arabic phrases that travelled through medieval astronomy. Stella is just the word for star. Astrid is neither. Sorted honestly, with the real etymology behind each.
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Star names are three different things
Ask for names meaning star and you will get one list containing three unrelated categories. The first is the plain word for star in some language — Stella in Latin, Setareh in Persian, Hoshi in Japanese, Yıldız in Turkish. These are the real answer to the question, and they behave like ordinary names because that is what they are.
The second category is the proper name of an actual star: Vega, Altair, Rigel, Deneb, Betelgeuse. These are not words meaning star at all. They are mostly Arabic descriptions of where a star sits in its constellation — a foot, a tail, an eagle — which reached Europe when Ptolemy's catalogue was translated from Arabic, and got clipped into single words along the way. Almost none of them was ever a personal name in Arabic. Using one is closer to naming a character Trafalgar than to naming her Stella, and that is a legitimate choice as long as you know you are making it.
The third category is padding: names that mean bright, or sky, or fate, filed under star because the association feels right. Celeste is the sky. Akash is the sky. Sora is the sky. They are tagged honestly below rather than quietly counted.
Which kind of star is it?
Every name on this page sorted by what it actually names. Full entries with etymologies follow.
| It names | Names |
|---|---|
| a star The plain word for star in some language. The largest group, and the one most people are actually looking for. | Aster, Stella, Estelle, Estrella, Astra, Najm, Najma, Tariq, Kawkab, Setareh, Sitara, Akhtar, Tara, Hoshi, Hoshiko, Seiya, Xing, Byeol, Kochav, Kochava, Esther, Zvezda, Zvezdana, Zvezdan, Yıldız, Seren, Réalta, Sterre, Stjarna, Nyota, Kokeb, Star, Starla |
| a specific star The proper name of a real star in the sky. Nearly all of these are Arabic phrases that came into English through medieval astronomy, and most were never personal names at all. | Electra, Maia, Alcyone, Merope, Asterope, Taygete, Celaeno, Antares, Arcturus, Sirius, Bellatrix, Regulus, Capella, Polaris, Castor, Pollux, Suhail, Suha, Vega, Altair, Rigel, Deneb, Aldebaran, Betelgeuse, Fomalhaut, Algol, Rohini, Revati, Chitra, Swati, Anuradha, Ashwini, Dhruva, Arundhati, Agastya, Abhijit, Aurvandill |
| constellation / asterism A constellation or an asterism — a pattern rather than a single star. The Pleiades alone give names in half a dozen languages. | Callisto, Cassiopeia, Andromeda, Lyra, Thurayya, Parvin, Nakshatra, Krittika, Subaru, Mazal, Ülker, Orion |
| morning star (Venus) Venus before dawn. Half the world named this separately from the evening star, and several of those names are in everyday use. | Phosphoros, Eosphoros, Lucifer, Saetbyeol, Danica, Zornitsa, Cholpan, Earendel |
| evening star (Venus) Venus after sunset. The Greeks worked out that this was the same planet as the morning star and kept both names anyway. | Hesperos, Vesper |
| planet A planet, usually Venus. Filed apart because a planet is not a star, whatever a name list says. | Zuhara, Nahid, Anahita, Shukra, Taibai, Nogah, Zuhura |
| comet A comet. Almost nobody is named for one, which is itself worth knowing. | Dhumaketu |
| starlight The light rather than the star. | Byeolbit |
| of the stars Of the stars — astrology, fate, star-born. The idea rather than the object. | Asteria, Astraea, Astrophel |
| sky / heaven — not star Sky or heaven. NOT star, and listed here so you can see which names only reached the topic by association. | Celeste, Akash, Sora |
Arabic names that mean star — and the real names of the stars
This is the group that matters most, and almost nobody explains it. The proper names of the bright stars are overwhelmingly Arabic, because Ptolemy's catalogue reached medieval Europe through Arabic translation, and the translators' descriptive phrases got clipped into single words. Vega is al-nasr al-wāqiʿ, the falling eagle. Altair is al-nasr al-ṭāʾir, the flying eagle — the same bird, rising instead of stooping. Rigel is rijl, a foot. Deneb is dhanab, a tail. Aldebaran is al-dabarān, the follower, because it trails the Pleiades across the sky. Separately, Arabic has ordinary star names people actually use: Najm and Najma, and Thurayya, which is the Pleiades and a common given name.
| Name | Used for | Literally | Where it comes from |
|---|---|---|---|
| Najm نجم NAJM | male | “star” a star | Arabic نجم najm, the plain word for a star, and the title of the 53rd sura of the Qur'an, An-Najm. The root n-j-m also gives najjām 'astrologer' and the verb najama 'to rise, to appear', so the Arabic star is literally the thing that comes up. Najmuddin, 'star of the faith', is the common compound. |
| Najma نجمة NAJ-muh | female | “star” a star | The feminine of najm and a widely used given name across the Arab world, South Asia and the Horn of Africa; Nejma and Nagma are the same name in Maghrebi and Urdu spelling. Simple, ordinary and genuinely means star — which, on this topic, is rarer than you would expect. |
| Thurayya الثريا thuh-RY-yuh | female | “the Pleiades” constellation / asterism | Al-Thurayyā is the Arabic name of the Pleiades, probably a diminutive from the root th-r-w suggesting abundance — the many-in-one cluster. It has been a real female given name for centuries and is one of the best entries in this whole topic, because it names an actual object in the sky and is in ordinary use. Soraya and Suraya are the Persian and Urdu forms; Princess Soraya of Iran is why Europeans know it. In classical Arabic poetry al-Thurayyā is the standard image of something precious and out of reach. On a character: Elegant, old and specific; excellent for desert, caravan and astronomer settings. |
| Suhail سهيل soo-HAYL | male | “the smooth one, the level one” a specific star | Suhayl is the Arabic name of Canopus, the second brightest star in the sky, low on the southern horizon and a navigation marker across Arabia and the Indian Ocean. Etymologically it is a diminutive of سهل sahl 'level, smooth, easy', so the name does not mean star; it means the gentle one, and the star wears it. A very common male name. The IAU has since attached the name Suhail to a different star, λ Velorum, which is a good reminder that catalogue names and traditional names are not the same system. |
| Suha سها SOO-ha | female | “the forgotten, the overlooked one” a specific star | Al-Suhā is Alcor, the faint companion of Mizar in the handle of the Big Dipper, and the name means 'the overlooked one' because seeing it was the classical Arabic test of sharp eyesight — 'I show him al-Suhā and he shows me the moon' is the proverb for someone who misses the point. A real and current female given name. The same pair of stars is Arundhati and Vasishtha in India, further down this page. On a character: A name that means 'the one you have to look hard to see' is a gift for a scout or a spy. |
| Tariq طارق TAH-rik | male | “one who knocks, the night visitor” a star | From طرق ṭaraqa 'to knock, to strike' — a ṭāriq is someone who arrives at night and knocks at the door. The 86th sura of the Qur'an is At-Tariq, and it defines the word itself: 'and what will make you know what al-ṭāriq is? — al-najm al-thāqib', the piercing star. So the star reading is not folk etymology bolted on later; it is in the text, which is unusual and worth saying. Commentators differ on which star is meant: the morning star, Sirius, Saturn or stars in general. Tariq ibn Ziyad, who crossed into Iberia in 711, gave his name to Gibraltar, Jabal Tāriq. |
| Kawkab كوكب KOW-kab | unisex | “star, planet” a star | Arabic kawkab covers both star and planet, and it is the exact cognate of Hebrew kokhav further down this page — the two Semitic words are the same reduplicated root. Say it plainly: kawkab is primarily a common noun. It is attested as a personal name, most visibly in the epithet of the Egyptian singer Umm Kulthum, Kawkab al-Sharq, 'Star of the East', and it is common in place names and compounds, but it is far less used as a given name than Najma. |
| Zuhara الزهرة zoo-HAH-ruh | female | “the brilliant one” planet | Al-Zuhara is the Arabic name of the planet Venus, from the root z-h-r 'to shine, to be radiant'. Keep it apart from Zahra زهرة, which is the same root but means 'flower, blossom' and is the epithet of Fatima al-Zahra — the two are constantly swapped in name lists, and only one of them is a planet. Zohreh is the Persian form and a common Iranian female name. |
| Vega النسر الواقع VEE-guh | unisex | “the falling one” a specific star | The head of the Arabic group, and the clearest example of how these names travelled. Arabic al-nasr al-wāqiʿ, 'the falling eagle' — the constellation Lyra read as a swooping bird of prey. Medieval Latin translators, working from the Alfonsine Tables compiled for Alfonso X between 1215 and 1270, rendered it Vultur Cadens and clipped the Arabic al-wāqiʿ down to Wega, then Vega. Correction most lists miss: the Spanish surname Vega is a completely unrelated word meaning 'water meadow, fertile plain', of pre-Roman Iberian origin, so a Spanish-speaking Vega is named after a field, not a star. In China this star is Zhinü, the Weaver Girl, separated from Niulang by the Milky Way; in India it is the nakshatra Abhijit. On a character: Short, hard, unisex and already reads as science fiction — one of the most usable names here. |
| Altair النسر الطائر al-TAIR | male | “the flying one” a specific star | From al-nasr al-ṭāʾir, 'the flying eagle' — the deliberate counterpart to Vega's falling eagle, and the Arabs took the image from the Babylonians, who already called it the eagle star. Only the second word survived into European use, so Altair literally means 'the flying one'. It is the Cowherd, Niulang, in the Chinese Qixi story and Hikoboshi in the Japanese Tanabata, opposite Vega across the Milky Way. In current use as a given name it owes a great deal to Assassin's Creed. |
| Rigel رجل الجوزاء RY-jel | male | “foot” a specific star | From rijl al-jawzāʾ, 'the foot of al-Jawzāʾ' — al-Jawzāʾ being the Arabic figure that overlaps our Orion, and the fuller form Rijl Jawzah al-Yusrā specifies the left foot. Also recorded as rijl al-jabbār, 'the foot of the giant', which gave the disused English forms Algebar and Elgebar. Rigel is the blue supergiant at Orion's knee and the brightest star in the constellation. First printed as Rigel in the Alfonsine Tables of 1521, though the Arabic is 10th-century. |
| Deneb ذنب الدجاجة DEH-neb | unisex | “tail” a specific star | From dhanab al-dajājah, 'the tail of the hen' — the Arabs saw Cygnus as a hen, and Deneb is the bright star at its tail. Because dhanab is simply 'tail', at least seven different stars carry a Deneb name for the same anatomical reason: Deneb Kaitos is the tail of the sea-monster, Deneb Algedi the tail of the goat, and Denebola the tail of the lion. A useful demonstration that these are descriptions, not names in our sense. |
| Aldebaran الدبران al-DEB-uh-ran | male | “the follower” a specific star | Al-Dabarān, 'the follower', from dabara 'to follow, to come behind' — it rises after the Pleiades and appears to chase them across the sky. The fuller Arabic is Nayyir al-Dabarān, 'the bright one of the follower'. The orange eye of Taurus. In Indian astronomy the same star is Rohini, the nakshatra the moon god loves best, which is on our moon page; here it appears in the Sanskrit group below, and the two entries are the same star seen from two traditions. |
| Betelgeuse يد الجوزاء BEE-tel-jooz | unisex | “hand of al-Jawza” a specific star | The best story in the topic, and almost every version of it online is wrong. The Arabic is yad al-jawzāʾ, 'the hand of al-Jawzāʾ' — the shoulder star of Orion. In the 13th century a European copyist misread the initial yāʾ (يـ), which carries two dots below, as bāʾ (بـ), which carries one, and Yed became Bed: the form Bedalgeuze. Renaissance scholars then assumed the B was original and back-translated it into an Arabic phrase that had never existed, ibṭ al-jawzāʾ, 'the armpit of al-Jawzāʾ' — which is why the 'armpit of the giant' gloss is still repeated everywhere. So the name we use preserves a scribal slip, and the popular meaning preserves an attempt to explain the slip. The IAU fixed the spelling Betelgeuse in 2016. Stated plainly: this is a star's catalogue name, not an attested given name in any language. On a character: Unusable straight, but the mangled-transmission story is perfect flavour for a setting with a lost astronomy. |
| Fomalhaut فم الحوت FOH-mal-hawt | unisex | “mouth of the fish” a specific star | Fam al-ḥūt, 'the mouth of the fish' — α Piscis Austrini, the lonely bright star of the southern autumn sky. Like Rigel and Deneb it is a body-part-of-a-figure name, which is the standard shape of traditional Arabic star names: the sky is a set of figures, and the stars are their limbs. Not a given name; included because the pattern is the page's argument. |
| Algol الغول AL-gol | unisex | “the ghoul” a specific star | Al-ghūl, 'the ghoul, the demon' — the English word ghoul is the same Arabic word borrowed directly. β Persei marks the head of Medusa in Perseus's hand, and it is an eclipsing binary that visibly dims every 2.87 days, which several traditions seem to have noticed: the Hebrew name is Rosh ha-Satan, the head of Satan. A star name that means a monster. Listed as a name only in the strict sense that people use it in fiction; it has no tradition as a personal name. |
Greek names that mean star
Greek gives the abstraction rather than the object: aster is the star, and Asteria and Astraea are built on it — Astraea being the star maiden who left a corrupt earth and became the constellation Virgo. The Pleiades are here as a set, which is how they work in almost every tradition. And the two halves of Venus, Phosphoros and Hesperos, sit in different sense groups on this page for the reason the Greeks themselves eventually discovered: they are the same planet.
| Name | Used for | Literally | Where it comes from |
|---|---|---|---|
| Aster Ἀστήρ AS-ter | male | “star” a star | Greek ἀστήρ 'star', from Proto-Indo-European *h₂stḗr — the single root behind Latin stella, English star, Welsh seren, Sanskrit tārā and Persian setāreh. Almost every 'star' name on this page that comes from an Indo-European language is ultimately this one word. Aster is attested as a real personal name: Aster of Amphipolis was the archer who put out Philip II of Macedon's eye at the siege of Methone in 354 BC. The flower is called an aster because its ray florets make a star. On a character: Short, hard-edged and unmistakably Greek — good for an astronomer, a navigator or a seer. |
| Asteria Ἀστερία as-TEER-ee-uh | female | “of the stars, starry one” of the stars | ἀστέριος 'starry', feminine. Asteria is the Titaness daughter of Coeus and Phoebe, sister of Leto and mother of Hekate, associated with falling stars and with divination by night. Fleeing Zeus in the shape of a quail she threw herself into the sea and became the floating island Asteria, later identified with Delos — the island that fell from the sky like a star. Note that she is a different goddess from Astraea below; the two get merged constantly. |
| Astraea Ἀστραία as-TRAY-uh | female | “star-maiden, of the stars” of the stars | The feminine of Ἀστραῖος Astraios 'starry', her father, who is the Titan of the dusk and the father of the winds and the stars by Eos. Astraea is the virgin goddess of justice who lived among people in the Golden Age and abandoned the earth when humanity turned cruel, taking her place in the sky as the constellation Virgo — the last immortal to leave. This is the cleanest 'she became a constellation' story in Greek myth, and it is why 'the return of Astraea' is Renaissance shorthand for a new golden age. Correction worth making: Astraea is Greek and means starry; Astrid is Norse and does not (see the exclusions). On a character: A judge, an exile, or a goddess who walked away — the myth does half the characterisation for you. |
| Astrophel AS-troh-fel | male | “star-lover” of the stars | ἄστρον 'star' + φιλεῖν 'to love'. Not an ancient name: Philip Sidney coined it for himself in the sonnet sequence Astrophel and Stella, published 1591, where he is the star-lover and his beloved is the star. The same sequence is where the given name Stella comes from, so this pair is one poet's invention that produced one very ordinary modern name and one that stayed literary. On a character: Reads as Elizabethan and slightly doomed; perfect for a court poet or a scholar-mage. |
| Electra Ἠλέκτρα ee-LEK-truh | female | “amber; gleaming” a specific star | From ἤλεκτρον ēlektron 'amber' — the substance that holds a charge when rubbed, which is why we have the word electricity. Electra is one of the seven Pleiades, and specifically the Lost Pleiad: only six stars in the cluster are easy to see, and the myth says she veiled herself in grief when Troy fell, a city founded by her descendant Dardanus, or let down her hair and left as a comet. So she is a named star whose name means 'gleaming amber', not 'star' — the distinction this page keeps making. On a character: Carries the Sophoclean Electra too; expect the name to read as vengeance unless you steer it. |
| Maia Μαῖα MY-uh | female | “mother, nurse, midwife” a specific star | Greek μαῖα is a respectful word for an older woman — 'mother', 'nurse', 'midwife'. Maia is the eldest and brightest of the Pleiades and the mother of Hermes by Zeus, and the Romans identified her with an old Italic goddess of growth who gave her name to the month of May. An honest entry: she is one of the seven stars of the cluster, but her name is a kinship word. |
| Alcyone Ἀλκυόνη al-SY-uh-nee | female | “kingfisher” a specific star | From ἀλκυών alkyōn, the kingfisher — a word Greek itself probably borrowed from a pre-Greek language, which is why the ancient folk etymology from ἅλς 'sea' + κυέω 'to conceive' does not hold. Alcyone is the brightest star of the Pleiades, and her myth (she and Ceyx turned into kingfishers, with the sea calm while she nests) is where 'halcyon days' comes from. Star by position, bird by etymology. |
| Merope Μερόπη MEH-roh-pee | female | “with her face turned” a specific star | Usually read as μέρος 'part' + ὤψ 'face, eye', 'the one with her face turned away' — the ancient explanation for why her star is the faintest of the Pleiades: she alone married a mortal, Sisyphus, and hides in shame. Two competing readings exist — 'sparkling-face' from (μαρ)μαίρω, and 'bee-eater' from μέροψ — so take 'face-turned' as the standard gloss rather than a settled fact. In the sky, Merope is genuinely the Pleiad wrapped in a reflection nebula. |
| Asterope Ἀστερόπη as-TEH-roh-pee | female | “star-face; or lightning” a specific star | Two forms of one Pleiad, and they mean different things. Στερόπη Sterope is στεροπή 'lightning, flash'; Ἀστερόπη Asterope reads as ἀστήρ 'star' + ὤψ 'face'. Ancient authors use both spellings for the same sister, so this is the one Pleiad whose name may actually contain the word star — and even that depends on which spelling you trust. |
| Taygete Ταϋγέτη tay-IJ-eh-tee | female | “uncertain; 'long-necked' by one reading” a specific star | A Pleiad, a nymph of Artemis, and the mother of Lacedaemon, the founder of Sparta. Mount Taygetus in Laconia is named after her, not the other way round. The name itself has no secure etymology — 'long-necked' is the gloss usually offered and it is a guess. Listed because she is one of the seven stars, with the caveat stated. |
| Celaeno Κελαινώ seh-LEE-noh | female | “the dark one, the black one” a specific star | From κελαινός 'black, murky, sombre' — the same entry we carry on the shadow page, seen from the other side. Celaeno is both one of the Pleiades, a genuinely faint star in the cluster, and one of the Harpies who prophesies famine to Aeneas. The faintness and the name fit so well that it is tempting to read one from the other, but there is no evidence the Greeks named her for her dimness. On a character: Works in either register: harbinger-witch, or the quiet seventh sister. |
| Callisto Καλλιστώ kuh-LIS-toh | female | “most beautiful” constellation / asterism | A correction, because Callisto tops most 'names that mean star' lists. Greek καλλίστη kallistē is the superlative of καλός 'beautiful' — 'the most beautiful'. Not a star word at all. Callisto is an Arcadian follower of Artemis whom Zeus seduced; she was turned into a bear and set in the sky as Ursa Major, the Great Bear, with her son Arcas as Boötes or Ursa Minor. So she is genuinely in the sky, and genuinely a constellation, and her name genuinely means 'most beautiful'. All three are true at once, and lists that write 'Callisto: star' are collapsing them. |
| Cassiopeia Κασσιόπεια kas-ee-oh-PEE-uh | female | “unknown” constellation / asterism | Be honest: the etymology is unknown. The gloss 'she whose words excel', from κέκασμαι 'to excel' + ἔπος 'word', is a later attempt to make sense of an obscure name and is not accepted as the root. Cassiopeia is the boastful queen of Aethiopia, mother of Andromeda, punished by being fixed to her throne in the northern sky, where the constellation's W shape is one of the easiest to find. A constellation name with no meaning to give you. |
| Andromeda Ἀνδρομέδα an-DROM-eh-duh | female | “ruler of men” constellation / asterism | ἀνήρ, stem ἀνδρ- 'man' + μέδω 'to rule, to be mindful of'. The princess chained to the rock for her mother's boasting and rescued by Perseus; her constellation contains the Andromeda Galaxy, which is why the name now reads as deep space. Nothing in the word means star — this is a 'ruler of men' name that the sky borrowed. |
| Lyra λύρα LY-ruh | female | “lyre” constellation / asterism | Greek λύρα, the lyre — the small constellation said to be the instrument of Orpheus, containing Vega. The modern given name owes almost everything to Lyra Belacqua in Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials (1995) and almost nothing to a naming tradition. It is a constellation name that means a musical instrument, which is a very different thing from meaning star. On a character: Reads young, brave and slightly feral because of Pullman; hard to use neutrally now. |
| Phosphoros Φωσφόρος FOS-foh-ros | male | “light-bringer” morning star (Venus) | φῶς 'light' + φέρω 'to bear'. The god and the name of the planet Venus when it rises before the sun, son of Eos the Dawn and of Astraios. Latin calqued it exactly as Lucifer, which is why the two are the same word in two languages — our light page tells that half of the story. The element phosphorus was named for the same reason: it glows in the dark. |
| Eosphoros Ἑωσφόρος ay-OS-foh-ros | male | “dawn-bringer” morning star (Venus) | ἠώς 'dawn' + φέρω 'to bear' — the older Homeric name for the same morning star, used interchangeably with Phosphoros. Worth having both, because the pair shows the Greeks naming the same object twice from two angles: the light it brings and the dawn it announces. Ἠώς / Eos is on our light page as the keystone of the dawn group. |
| Hesperos Ἕσπερος HES-peh-ros | male | “evening; the west” evening star (Venus) | From Proto-Indo-European *wesperos 'evening', the same root as Latin vesper and English vespers. Hesperos is Venus as the evening star, and he is the brother — in some tellings the father — of Phosphoros, which is the mythological way of saying the Greeks originally thought they were two objects. Ancient tradition credits Pythagoras (Parmenides in other reports) with recognising around 550 BC that the morning star and the evening star are one planet, and the Greeks kept both names anyway. That is why this page has two separate senses for them. The Hesperides, the nymphs of the far west, are the same root. On a character: A dusk-side counterpart to any dawn-named character; the sibling pairing writes itself. |
| Antares Ἀντάρης an-TAIR-eez | male | “rival of Ares” a specific star | ἀντί 'against, instead of' + Ἄρης Ares — the red supergiant at the heart of Scorpius was named for looking like Mars and competing with it. One of the very few bright stars whose western name is Greek rather than Arabic. In Sanskrit astronomy the same star is the nakshatra Jyeshtha, 'the eldest'; in Arabic it is Qalb al-ʿAqrab, 'the heart of the scorpion'. As a given name it is modern and rare, used for its sound and its redness rather than any tradition. |
| Arcturus Ἀρκτοῦρος ark-TOOR-us | male | “guardian of the bear” a specific star | ἄρκτος 'bear' + οὖρος 'watcher, guardian' — the brightest star of Boötes, which trails Ursa Major across the northern sky. It is named in Hesiod and in the Book of Job, making it one of the oldest recorded star names in any language. Again: an ancient star name that does not contain the word star. As a personal name it is a modern astronomical borrowing. |
| Sirius Σείριος SIR-ee-us | male | “scorching, glowing” a specific star | The brightest star in the night sky, α Canis Majoris, the Dog Star. Σείριος is traditionally 'scorching' — its heliacal rising marked the hottest weeks of the Mediterranean summer, which is where 'the dog days' comes from. Flag the uncertainty honestly: some scholars connect it instead to σείω 'to shake, to sparkle', and others think the Greek word is a folk-etymologised borrowing from a non-Greek source. As a given name it is essentially Harry Potter's, Sirius Black being one of a family named after stars. In Arabic it is al-Shiʿrā, named in the Qur'an; in Sanskrit, Mrigavyadha. On a character: The only star name most readers will recognise instantly — use that, or avoid it. |
Latin names that mean star
Stella is simply the word, and it is the most-used star name in the Western world. Two cautions sit beside it. Astra is the plural of astrum and was never a Roman given name — it is a modern coinage. And Stella Maris, star of the sea, is a title of the Virgin Mary rather than the origin of Stella; the phrase itself probably began as a copyist's slip from stilla maris, a drop of the sea. The named stars in this group — Polaris, Regulus, Capella, Bellatrix, Antares — are Latin astronomy rather than Latin naming.
| Name | Used for | Literally | Where it comes from |
|---|---|---|---|
| Stella STEL-uh | female | “star” a star | Latin stella 'star', cognate with Greek ἀστήρ and English star. Datable as a personal name: Philip Sidney coined it in Astrophel and Stella (1591). Two corrections. First, Stella Maris is not the etymology of Stella — it is a title of the Virgin Mary that arose from a copying error: Jerome, following Eusebius, glossed the Hebrew name Miriam as stilla maris, 'drop of the sea', and a later scribe wrote stella, 'star'. Second, Stellan is not a form of Stella (see the exclusions). Our light page files Stella under starlight because it had no 'star' sense; here it sits under star, which is the same ruling stated more precisely. |
| Estelle es-TEL | female | “star” a star | Old French estoile / estele from Latin stella, so the same word as Stella by a different road. Rare in medieval England, revived in the 19th century, probably on the strength of Estella Havisham in Dickens's Great Expectations (1860) — where the character is explicitly a cold, distant light the hero steers by, which is about as on-the-nose as a star name gets. Estela, Stela and Estella are the same name in Spanish, Portuguese, Czech and Romanian. |
| Estrella es-TRAY-ah | female | “star” a star | The ordinary modern Spanish word for star, from Latin stella, and a genuine Spanish given name — often in the Marian title María Estrella or Estrella del Mar, which is Stella Maris translated. Do not confuse it with the surname Vega, which is Spanish but means a water meadow. |
| Astra AS-truh | female | “stars” a star | Latin astra is the plural of astrum 'star' — itself borrowed from Greek ἄστρον — and it survives in English mainly through per aspera ad astra, 'through hardships to the stars'. Correction: this was not a Roman personal name. Astra as a given name is a 19th- and 20th-century coinage built straight from the Latin word, and the Norse name Astrid has nothing to do with it (see the exclusions). |
| Lucifer LOO-si-fer | male | “light-bringer” morning star (Venus) | lux 'light' + ferre 'to bear', a word-for-word calque of Greek Phosphoros, and in classical Latin simply the name of Venus as the morning star; Cicero and Ovid use it that way. Our light page gives the full account, including Lucifer of Cagliari, the 4th-century Sardinian bishop and saint who really bore it, and Jerome's rendering of Isaiah 14:12 that turned a taunt aimed at a Babylonian king into a biography of Satan. It is repeated here because on a star page it belongs to the morning-star group, which is the group its meaning actually names. |
| Vesper VES-per | unisex | “evening; the evening star” evening star (Venus) | Latin vesper is both 'evening' and the evening star itself — the exact counterpart of Greek Hesperos, from the same Indo-European root *wesperos. It gives English vespers, the evening office. As a modern given name it is unisex and owes a good deal to Vesper Lynd in Casino Royale (1953), where Fleming has the character explain that she was born on a bleak evening. Honest framing: it means evening, and Venus at evening, in that order. On a character: Quietly excellent for an assassin, a spy or a night-shift character — the word is cold. |
| Bellatrix BEL-uh-triks | female | “female warrior” a specific star | Latin bellatrix, the feminine of bellator 'warrior', from bellum 'war'. It is the traditional name of γ Orionis, the star at the hunter's left shoulder, sometimes called the Amazon Star, and the IAU confirmed the spelling in 2016. So it is a real star name that means warrior — filed under named-star, not star, and a good example of why those two need separating. In use as a given name it is almost entirely Harry Potter. |
| Regulus REG-yoo-lus | male | “little king, prince” a specific star | A diminutive of rex 'king'. Copernicus gave α Leonis this name in the 16th century, translating the older Greek Basiliskos and Arabic Qalb al-Asad 'the heart of the lion' — the Babylonians had already called it the king star. It was also a genuine Roman cognomen: Marcus Atilius Regulus, the consul of the First Punic War, and Saint Regulus. One of the few named stars with a real ancient human pedigree as well. |
| Capella kuh-PEL-uh | female | “little she-goat” a specific star | A diminutive of capra 'she-goat' — α Aurigae, the sixth brightest star in the sky, is the goat carried on the charioteer's shoulder, identified with Amalthea who suckled the infant Zeus. Another named star whose word means an animal. Used as a given name only in the modern astronomical way. |
| Polaris poh-LAIR-is | unisex | “of the pole” a specific star | Medieval Latin stella polaris, 'the pole star', from polus, itself from Greek πόλος 'axis, pivot'. The name is younger than it feels: α Ursae Minoris only moved close enough to the celestial pole to deserve it in the last millennium or so, and the Greeks steered by a different star. Precession means Vega held the job around 12,000 BC and will hold it again. A directional word, not a star word — and that is exactly what makes it a good name for a fixed point in a story. |
| Castor Κάστωρ KAS-tor | male | “beaver” a specific star | Greek κάστωρ 'beaver' — the animal's name in Latin and in scientific Latin to this day. Castor is α Geminorum and the mortal twin of the Dioscuri, patrons of sailors, whose constellation is the Twins. A star name, a myth name, and a rodent, all at once; nothing in it means star. |
| Pollux Πολυδεύκης POL-uks | male | “very sweet” a specific star | The Latin form of Greek Πολυδεύκης Polydeukes, usually read as πολύ 'much' + δευκής 'sweet', though the second element is not securely explained. β Geminorum, brighter than Castor despite the letter, and the immortal twin who shared his immortality with his brother so the two alternate between Olympus and the underworld — which is why the constellation is visible half the year. Listed with Castor because the pair is the point. |
| Celeste seh-LEST | unisex | “heavenly, of the sky” sky / heaven — not star | Latin caelestis 'heavenly', from caelum 'sky, heaven'. Filed under sky, not star, and that is the whole reason it is here: Celeste, Celestine, Celia and Celina are the names that get swept into star lists on the strength of 'celestial'. The sky is where stars are; it is not what they are. Caelestinus was a real late-Roman name and five popes bore it. |
Sanskrit names that mean star
Sanskrit has the most systematic star vocabulary here, because Indian astronomy divides the sky into twenty-seven nakshatras, lunar mansions, each a named star or asterism — and a great many of them are ordinary given names. Rohini is Aldebaran, Chitra is Spica, Swati is Arcturus, Abhijit is Vega, Dhruva is the pole star and the boy in the Puranas who became it. Tara is the plain word for star, and also a goddess in both Hindu and Buddhist tradition.
| Name | Used for | Literally | Where it comes from |
|---|---|---|---|
| Tara तारा TAA-ruh | female | “star” a star | Sanskrit तारा tārā 'star', from the same Indo-European root as astēr and stella. Three things are true and get tangled. First, as a Hindu name it belongs to Tara of the Ramayana, wife of the vanara king Vali, counted among the panchakanya and remembered for the lament she delivers over his body. Second, the Buddhist goddess Tārā is usually explained not from 'star' but from the root tṛ 'to cross over' — 'she who ferries across', the saviouress — so the same spelling carries two etymologies in two religions. Third, the Irish Tara is a different word entirely: the Hill of Tara is Teamhair, a place of assembly, and has no connection to the Sanskrit. Our moon page lists Tara in its exclusions precisely because it means star and not moon; this is where it belongs. On a character: Short and globally legible, which is rare here; it will not read as exotic to anyone. |
| Nakshatra नक्षत्र nuk-SHUH-truh | unisex | “star, lunar mansion” constellation / asterism | The key to the whole Indian group. A nakṣatra is one of the 27 segments of the moon's monthly path, each identified with a named star or small asterism — Ashwini, Bharani, Krittika, Rohini and so on round to Revati. Because a child's naming syllable is traditionally chosen from the nakshatra it is born under, this is a naming system built directly on the sky, and most of the 27 names are in live use as personal names. Sanskrit thus has more real star-derived given names than any other language on this page. Nakshatra itself is also used as a name, chiefly in South India and chiefly recently. |
| Rohini रोहिणी ROH-hi-nee | female | “the red one, the ascending one” a specific star | Rohiṇī means 'reddish' or 'ascending', not 'star' — the same honest caveat we give on the moon page. It is the fourth nakshatra and the Indian name of Aldebaran, the orange eye of Taurus, which is genuinely red. In myth Rohini is the favourite of Chandra's twenty-seven wives, the daughters of Daksha, and his lingering with her is the story that explains the waxing and waning of the moon. So the same star heads two of our pages: here as Aldebaran, there as the star the moon loves. |
| Krittika कृत्तिका KRIT-ti-kaa | female | “the cutters” constellation / asterism | The third nakshatra and the Indian name of the Pleiades, usually connected with kṛt 'to cut' — the cluster read as a blade or a row of cutting edges. The Krittikas are the six mothers who nursed the war god Kartikeya, whose name means 'son of the Krittikas', and the missing seventh sister is a motif Indian and Greek myth share independently. Used as a female given name, more in Bengal and the south than the north. |
| Revati रेवती REH-vuh-tee | female | “prosperous, wealthy” a specific star | The 27th and last nakshatra, identified with ζ Piscium and the small group of stars around it, and considered one of the most auspicious. Revati is also the wife of Balarama in the Puranas. The word means 'rich, prosperous', so once again the star name is not a star word — it is a quality the star was thought to bring. |
| Chitra चित्रा CHIT-raa | female | “bright, variegated, many-coloured” a specific star | The 14th nakshatra and the Indian name of Spica, α Virginis — a single brilliant blue-white star, which is why the word chosen was citrā 'brilliant, dappled, distinct'. The same word gives citra 'a picture' and the month of Chaitra. A very common female name in India, and one whose meaning sits exactly on the border between 'bright' and 'star' that this page keeps policing. |
| Swati स्वाति SWAA-tee | female | “uncertain; 'the very good one' by one reading” a specific star | The 15th nakshatra and the Indian name of Arcturus, the bright orange star that Greek called the bear-guard. Standing alone far from the ecliptic, it is described in Indian tradition as the independent one, blown free like a young plant in the wind. The etymology is usually given as su 'good' + ati 'very', which is plausible rather than certain — say so. A common female name. Svati is also the raindrop that classical poetry says becomes a pearl in the oyster. |
| Anuradha अनुराधा uh-noo-RAA-dhaa | female | “following Radha” a specific star | The 17th nakshatra, three stars in the body of Scorpius, and a very common Indian female name. anu 'after, following' + rādhā, the preceding asterism — the nakshatras are a sequence, and some of them are named simply by their place in it, exactly as Arabic named Aldebaran 'the follower' for following the Pleiades. Two traditions, same naming instinct. |
| Ashwini अश्विनी ASH-wi-nee | female | “of the horsemen” a specific star | The first of the 27 nakshatras, β and γ Arietis, named for the Ashvins — the twin horsemen-physicians of the Rigveda who ride the dawn. From aśva 'horse'. A common female given name in Maharashtra and the south, and a good illustration that a nakshatra name can mean horses: the sky is being described, not the stars themselves. |
| Dhruva ध्रुव DHROO-vuh | male | “fixed, immovable” a specific star | The Sanskrit name of the Pole Star, and one of the strongest entries on the page. dhruva means 'fixed, unshakeable', which is the one thing that distinguishes Polaris from every other star. In the Vishnu Purana, Dhruva is a slighted child who performs such austerity that Vishnu sets him in the sky at the point around which everything else turns. Dhruv is a common modern Indian male name, and the Mahabharata already uses dhruva nakṣatra for the pole star. Compare Latin Polaris, which says the same thing in a duller way. On a character: A name that means 'the one that does not move' — ideal for an oathkeeper or a last guard. |
| Arundhati अरुन्धती uh-RUN-dhuh-tee | female | “unrestrained; not obstructed” a specific star | The Indian name of Alcor — the same faint star Arabic calls al-Suhā, higher up this page. Arundhati is the wife of the sage Vasishtha, who is Mizar, the brighter star beside her, and in the traditional Hindu wedding the couple is taken outside and shown the pair: the two orbit in step rather than one circling the other, which is the point being made about marriage. One of the loveliest facts in the topic, and a real female given name. On a character: Built-in symbolism for a bonded pair, a twinned soul or an inseparable partnership. |
| Agastya अगस्त्य uh-GUST-yuh | male | “uncertain” a specific star | Canopus, the second brightest star in the sky, has been called Agastya in India since roughly 600 BC after the Vedic sage of that name, who in myth travelled south and made the Vindhya mountains bow. Because Canopus is low in the southern sky from India, its heliacal rising marks the end of the monsoon, and the Brihat Samhita has a whole chapter on it. The etymology of the sage's name is not settled — the popular reading 'mountain-thrower' is folk etymology. A real male given name in the south. |
| Abhijit अभिजित् uh-bhi-JEET | male | “victorious” a specific star | The Indian name of Vega — abhi 'towards' + jit 'conquering', 'the victorious one'. It is the 28th nakshatra, the one that was dropped when the list was standardised at 27, which is itself a nice fact: it is still used for the most auspicious moment of the day, the abhijit muhurta. A common modern male name in Bengal and Maharashtra. Compare the Arabic name for the same star, 'the falling eagle'. |
| Shukra शुक्र SHOOK-ruh | male | “bright, clear” planet | The Sanskrit name of the planet Venus and of its regent, the sage Shukracharya, teacher of the asuras and the only being who knew the art of raising the dead. The word means 'bright, white, clear', so it belongs to the same family of 'brilliant one' names as Arabic Zuhara and Chinese Taibai — three unrelated traditions all naming Venus for being the brightest thing after the sun and moon. Friday is Shukravar. |
| Dhumaketu धूमकेतु DHOO-muh-kay-too | male | “smoke-bannered” comet | dhūma 'smoke' + ketu 'banner, flag' — the Sanskrit word for a comet, a star trailing a pennant of smoke, and one of the few genuine comet words that has ever been used as a name at all. Be precise: it is a common noun, and its use as a name is essentially literary — the Gujarati writer Gaurishankar Govardhanram Joshi (1892–1965) published under the pen name Dhumketu. Included because 'names that mean comet' is a category people look for and almost everything offered under it is invented. On a character: A herald, an omen or a doomed prophet; the word is about arrival and warning, not light. |
| Akash आकाश AA-kaash | male | “sky, open space, aether” sky / heaven — not star | ākāśa is the sky and also the fifth element of Indian philosophy, the space in which everything else exists. Extremely common as a male given name across India. Filed under sky and not star deliberately: this is the biggest single category of names that get mis-sold as star names, and the honest answer is that a sky word is a sky word. |
Persian names that mean star
Persian setareh is the star, and it is a living name. Parvin is the Pleiades, again a real given name rather than an astronomical term. The group also holds the Venus complication: Nahid is the modern Persian name of the planet, by way of Anahita, whose association with Venus came later through Hellenistic syncretism rather than from the original Zoroastrian figure.
| Name | Used for | Literally | Where it comes from |
|---|---|---|---|
| Setareh ستاره seh-tah-REH | female | “star” a star | Modern Persian ستاره setāreh 'star', from Middle Persian stārag, from the same Indo-European *h₂stḗr as Greek astēr and Latin stella. A common Iranian female name, also used to mean 'fate' in the astrological sense — 'my star' in Persian carries the same double meaning it does in English. This is the word that stands behind one of the proposed etymologies of Esther. |
| Sitara ستاره si-TAA-ruh | female | “star” a star | The same Persian word as it is used in Urdu, Hindi and Pashto, where it is a common female name. Sitara Devi, the Kathak dancer, is the best-known bearer. Sitara-e-Pakistan, 'Star of Pakistan', is a state decoration built on the same word. Note it is a borrowing from Persian into Urdu, not a Sanskrit word — the Sanskrit star word is tārā, further down. |
| Akhtar اختر AKH-tar | unisex | “star” a star | Persian اختر akhtar, an older word for star that also means 'good fortune, omen' — the same slide from star to luck that Hebrew mazal makes. Used as a given name in Iran, Afghanistan and South Asia, and very widely as a surname. Akhtar-shumār, literally 'star-counter', is the Persian word for an astrologer. |
| Parvin پروین par-VEEN | female | “the Pleiades” constellation / asterism | Persian پروین parvin is the Pleiades — the same cluster as Arabic Thurayya, Turkish Ülker, Sanskrit Krittika and Japanese Subaru, and one of the very few objects in the sky that nearly every tradition named separately and then used as a personal name. Parvin Etesami (1907–1941) is one of the most celebrated poets in modern Persian. Perwîn is the Kurdish form. |
| Nahid ناهید naa-HEED | female | “Venus” planet | The modern Persian name of the planet Venus, descended from Middle Persian Anāhīd — so unlike most 'Venus' names in this list, Nahid genuinely is the planet's ordinary name in the language, not a poetic gloss. A common Iranian female name. Anahid is the Armenian form. |
| Anahita آناهیتا aa-naa-hee-TAA | female | “immaculate, undefiled” planet | A careful one. Avestan Arədvī Sūrā Anāhitā breaks down as *an- 'not' + *āhita 'soiled' — 'the unstained one'. She is an Iranian divinity of the waters, fertility and wisdom, and her name says nothing about stars or planets. The Venus link is real but secondary: in the Hellenistic period Anahita was identified with Mesopotamian Ishtar and Greek Aphrodite, and through that syncretism her name became the Persian name of the planet, which is why Middle Persian Anāhīd and modern Nahid mean Venus. So the planet sense is genuine and ancient, and the etymology still means 'immaculate'. Both halves have to be said. |
Hebrew names that mean star
Kochav is the star and Kochava its feminine. Mazal is a constellation — and the source of mazel tov, which literally wishes you a good constellation, that is, good fortune under the stars. Esther is the famous problem in this group, and the entry sets out the dispute rather than settling it.
| Name | Used for | Literally | Where it comes from |
|---|---|---|---|
| Kochav כּוֹכָב koh-KHAHV | male | “star” a star | Biblical Hebrew kōkhāḇ 'star', the exact cognate of Arabic kawkab — both from a reduplicated Semitic root, ultimately related to Akkadian kakkabu. Numbers 24:17, 'a star shall come forth out of Jacob', is the verse that made kokhav a messianic word in Judaism, which matters for the Bar Kokhba entry in our exclusions. Used as a modern Israeli given name, though less than the feminine. |
| Kochava כּוֹכָבָה koh-kha-VAH | female | “star” a star | The feminine of kokhav and a modern Israeli name — part of the same revival wave that produced Ayelet, Tehila and Ora, where ordinary Hebrew nouns were taken up as given names when the language returned to daily use. Simple, literal and current. |
| Mazal מַזָּל mah-ZAHL | female | “constellation; destiny, luck” constellation / asterism | One of the most satisfying entries on the page. Hebrew mazzāl meant a constellation of the zodiac — the word probably comes from Akkadian manzaltu, 'station, position', the place a heavenly body stands in. In Mishnaic Hebrew it becomes 'astrological sign', and from there simply 'fortune', which is what mazal means in modern Hebrew and Yiddish. So mazel tov is literally 'a good constellation', a wish that the stars are standing well for you. Mazal has long been a common female name among Sephardi and Mizrahi Jews. The same star-to-luck slide happens independently in Persian akhtar. |
| Nogah נֹגַהּ NOH-gah | unisex | “brightness, glow” planet | Hebrew nogah is 'brightness', and it is the Hebrew name of the planet Venus — the same logic as Arabic al-Zuhara, with which it shares the sense of 'the brilliant one'. It is also a biblical personal name: Nogah is listed among the sons of David born in Jerusalem, at 1 Chronicles 3:7 and 14:6. Unisex in modern Israeli use, and rather more common for women. An honest edge case: the word means brightness, and the planet sense is a usage, not an etymology. |
| Esther אֶסְתֵר ES-ter | female | “uncertain; possibly 'star'” a star | The famous trap, presented as a dispute rather than a decision. Three proposals, none proven. One: Persian stāra 'star', the word that gives modern setāreh — attractive, widely repeated, and phonetically plausible for a book set at the Persian court. Two: the Babylonian goddess Ishtar, which fits the way her cousin Mordecai's name echoes Marduk. Three: the Hebrew text itself supplies a different name — Esther 2:7 says 'Hadassah, that is Esther', and Hadassah means 'myrtle', so the book presents Esther as the second, foreign name of a woman whose Hebrew name was something else. A rabbinic reading connects it to the root s-t-r 'to hide', playing on God's hiddenness in the only biblical book that never names him. Behind the Name gives the star and Ishtar options and marks both as possible. Listed here because the star reading is genuinely one of the live candidates — not because it is settled. Hester is the same name in its Latinised form and carries the same uncertainty. On a character: A queen who conceals her origin: the 'hidden' etymology is the one that pays off in fiction. |
Slavic names that mean star
Slavic zvezda is the star, and unlike most of the words on this page it became a genuine given name: Zvezdana, Zvezdan. Danica and Zornitsa are the morning star, and both are ordinary names in the Balkans.
| Name | Used for | Literally | Where it comes from |
|---|---|---|---|
| Zvezda Звезда ZVYEZ-dah | female | “star” a star | Proto-Slavic *gvězda 'star', which is the one major Indo-European star word that is NOT from *h₂stḗr — Slavic and Baltic went their own way here, compare Lithuanian žvaigždė. Zvezda is Serbian, Russian and Bulgarian; Zvijezda Croatian and Bosnian; Gwiazda Polish; Hvězda Czech. Used as a given name mainly in Macedonian and Bulgarian, and much more often as the base for Zvezdana below. |
| Zvezdana Звездана zvyez-DAH-nah | female | “starry, of the stars” a star | The usable form: Zvezdana in Serbian and Slovene, Zvjezdana in Croatian, Zvezdelina in Bulgarian. Formed from *gvězda with the adjectival suffix, so 'starry' rather than 'star'. A genuinely common name in the former Yugoslavia in the 20th century. |
| Zvezdan Звездан ZVYEZ-dahn | male | “starry” a star | The masculine counterpart, Serbian and Croatian. Worth having because male star names are thin on the ground outside Arabic: most languages made the star feminine and left it there. |
| Danica Даница DAH-nee-tsah | female | “morning star, Venus” morning star (Venus) | From the root dan 'day' — the morning star is the day-star, the one still burning as the sky lightens, and in South Slavic folklore Danica is the personified morning star, sister or wife of the Sun. Serbian, Croatian, Slovene and Slovak, and current in English since the 1970s. Our light page carries the same ruling and files it under starlight for want of a morning-star sense; here it gets the right label. Do not confuse it with Slavic Zora / Zorya, which means dawn, not the star. |
| Zornitsa Зорница zor-NEE-tsah | female | “morning star” morning star (Venus) | Bulgarian зорница, built on зора zora 'dawn' — the same object as Danica named from the other end, the dawn-star rather than the day-star. A common Bulgarian female name. Between Danica, Zornitsa, Greek Phosphoros, Latin Lucifer, Turkic Cholpan, Korean Saetbyeol and Old English Earendel, the morning star is the single most widely named object on this page, which tells you something about how much people cared about the last light before sunrise. |
Turkic names that mean star
Turkish Yıldız is the star and one of the most common feminine names in Turkey — though it began as a masculine name, which the entry explains. Ülker is the Pleiades, and Cholpan is the morning star across the wider Turkic world.
| Name | Used for | Literally | Where it comes from |
|---|---|---|---|
| Yıldız Yıldız yil-DUZ | female | “star” a star | Turkish yıldız 'star', from Old Turkic yultuz — the same word in every Turkic language. A common female given name and an extremely common surname; the ay-yıldız, the crescent and star, is the Turkish flag. Our moon page already mentions Yıldız Khan, who in the Oghuz origin legend is the Star brother of Gün Khan (Sun) and Ay Khan (Moon). Careful with the near-homonym yıldırım 'lightning', which is a different word and a different name. |
| Ülker Ülker ool-KER | unisex | “the Pleiades” constellation / asterism | The Turkish name of the Pleiades and a real unisex given name. The 11th-century lexicographer Mahmud al-Kashgari records the phrase ülker çerig, troops drawn up in ambush — the cluster seen as a tight formation of soldiers, which is a striking alternative to the sisters and doves of the west. Along with Thurayya, Parvin, Krittika and Subaru, this is the fifth language on the page that turned the Pleiades into a personal name. |
| Cholpan Чолпон chol-PAHN | female | “Venus, the morning star” morning star (Venus) | From Proto-Turkic *čolpan, one of the oldest recorded Turkic words for Venus. Kyrgyz Cholpon, Kazakh Sholpan, Uzbek Cho'lpon, Tatar and Bashkir Şulpan, Turkmen Çolpan — a live female given name right across Central Asia, and Cholpon-Ata on Lake Issyk-Kul is named for it. The Uzbek poet Abdulhamid Sulaymon o'g'li took Cho'lpon as his pen name. |
Japanese names that mean star
Hoshi 星 is the star, and it works better as an element than alone. Subaru is the Japanese name for the Pleiades, which is why the car company's badge is a cluster of six stars — and its own long-standing explanation of the word is an etymology scholars have since rejected.
| Name | Used for | Literally | Where it comes from |
|---|---|---|---|
| Hoshi 星 HOH-shee | unisex | “star” a star | 星 hoshi is the ordinary Japanese word for a star; the Sino-Japanese reading of the same character is sei, used for planets and in compounds. Say the awkward part plainly: Hoshi on its own is uncommon as a registered given name in Japan. It is far more familiar as a surname — Hoshino 星野 'star field', Hoshikawa 星川 'star river' — and as a stage name or nickname. In Japanese it is the kanji, not the sound, that carries meaning, which is why hoshi written 星 is a star and the same syllables written otherwise are not. |
| Hoshiko 星子 HOH-shee-koh | female | “star child” a star | 星 'star' + 子 'child', the classic -ko pattern that dominated Japanese female names for most of the 20th century and is now old-fashioned. This is the standard way the star kanji reaches a personal name: in a compound, not on its own. 星羅 Seira and 星奈 Sena are the modern equivalents. |
| Seiya 星矢 SAY-yah | male | “star arrow” a star | 星 sei 'star' + 矢 ya 'arrow', though the same sound is written with several other kanji combinations that mean nothing astronomical — 聖也, 誠也 and so on. The 星矢 spelling is well known from Saint Seiya. A useful example of the general rule: a Japanese name only means star if the writing says so. |
| Subaru 昴 SOO-bah-roo | unisex | “the Pleiades” constellation / asterism | 昴 subaru is the Japanese name of the Pleiades, attested as far back as the Man'yōshū. The car company is named after the cluster, and its badge shows six stars for the six companies that merged into Fuji Heavy Industries in 1953 — and, conveniently, for the six Pleiades visible to the naked eye. The correction: the widely repeated gloss 'Subaru means to unite' comes from an etymology proposed by the late-Edo scholar Kariya Ekisai linking it to the verb subaru 統ばる 'to be gathered together', and that derivation is now regarded as mistaken. The company's own marketing still repeats it. Subaru is a real, if uncommon, unisex given name. On a character: Instantly recognisable and instantly a car to Western readers — a real constraint. |
| Sora 空 SOH-rah | unisex | “sky” sky / heaven — not star | 空 sora 'sky, empty space' — one of the most popular Japanese given names of the last two decades, unisex, and regularly listed on English-language sites as meaning star. It does not. It means sky, and the same character means 'empty', which is the Buddhist śūnyatā. Filed here as a sky name so the difference is on the record. |
Korean names that mean star
Korean byeol 별 is a native word rather than a Sino-Korean one, which is unusual, and Saetbyeol is the morning star. The entries are honest about how much these are used as given names.
| Name | Used for | Literally | Where it comes from |
|---|---|---|---|
| Byeol 별 byuhl | unisex | “star” a star | 별 byeol is the native Korean word for star, as opposed to the Sino-Korean 성 seong from Chinese 星. It belongs to the hangeul-ireum movement — pure-Korean given names written in hangul with no Chinese characters behind them — which took off from the 1980s, so this is a genuinely modern name with an ancient word in it. The actress Kang Byul is a bearer. Also spelled Byul or Byeul in romanisation. |
| Saetbyeol 샛별 sate-byuhl | female | “morning star, Venus” morning star (Venus) | 샛별 saetbyeol is the ordinary Korean word for the morning star, Venus before dawn, and it is used figuratively for a rising talent exactly as English uses 'rising star'. Used as a hangul given name, though less often than plain Byeol, and it is worth saying that it remains primarily a common noun. Korea, like Greece, Rome, China and the Slavs, gave the dawn Venus its own word. |
| Byeolbit 별빛 byuhl-bit | female | “starlight” starlight | 별 'star' + 빛 'light' — starlight, and one of the few names anywhere that really means starlight rather than being filed under it for want of a better slot. A hangul given name of the same modern type as Byeol. Compare the light page, which had to put Stella, Seren and Danica under starlight because it had no separate star sense; this page splits them properly and byeolbit is what is left when you do. |
Chinese names that mean star
Chinese xīng 星 is the star and works as a name element. Taibai is the planet Venus, literally the great white one.
| Name | Used for | Literally | Where it comes from |
|---|---|---|---|
| Xing 星 shing | unisex | “star” a star | 星 xīng is the Chinese word for star, and the same character Japanese reads as hoshi or sei. As a given name it works the way most Chinese name elements work: rarely alone, usually as one half of a two-character name — 星辰 Xingchen 'stars and celestial bodies', 星宇 Xingyu 'star universe', 星宏. The actor Stephen Chow is 周星馳 Zhou Xingchi, 'star-galloping', taken from a line of Tang poetry. Honest note: xing alone is more often a surname element or a word than a standalone personal name. |
| Taibai 太白 tye-BYE | male | “great white” planet | 太白 Tàibái, 'the Great White', is the classical Chinese name of the planet Venus — the brightest thing in the sky after the sun and moon, named for its colour as Sanskrit Shukra and Arabic al-Zuhara were named for their brilliance. It is a real personal name: the poet Li Bai's courtesy name was Taibai, because, according to the New Book of Tang, his mother dreamt of the great white star while carrying him. Chinese also splits Venus in two like the Greeks did — Qiming 启明, the opening brightness, in the morning, and Changgeng 长庚 in the evening. On a character: Comes with a ready-made origin story: the child whose mother dreamt of a falling star. |
Celtic and Gaelic names that mean star
Welsh Seren is the star, and it is genuinely popular in Wales now, though modern. One correction worth carrying: seren is not borrowed from Latin stella, as often claimed — the two are cousins, both descended from the same Indo-European word. Irish Réalta is the Irish word for star, and it is used as a name far more rarely than Seren is in Wales.
| Name | Used for | Literally | Where it comes from |
|---|---|---|---|
| Seren Seren SEH-ren | female | “star” a star | Welsh seren 'star', formed from the plural sêr plus the singulative suffix -en. A correction to make carefully, including to our own light page: seren is NOT borrowed from Latin. It is inherited — Proto-Brythonic *ster, Proto-Celtic *sterā, Proto-Indo-European *h₂stḗr — so it is a cousin of Latin stella and Greek astēr, not a descendant of either. What is true is that the given name is recent: a modern Welsh coinage rather than a medieval name, now common in Wales. Our moon page's exclusions list it as not-a-moon-name, and that still stands; this is the page it belongs on. On a character: Soft and short; works for Welsh-flavoured settings without sounding invented. |
| Réalta Réalta RAYL-tuh | female | “star” a star | Irish réalta / réalt 'star', with the diminutive Réaltín 'little star'. Be blunt about its status: this is the ordinary Irish noun, and as a given name it is so rare that Ireland's Central Statistics Office has recorded it in the charts only once since records began in 1964 — a name needs three babies in a year to appear at all. It is a real word being used as a name by a handful of parents, not a traditional Irish name, and the same applies to almost every 'ancient Celtic star name' offered online. |
Old Norse names that mean star
The Norse contribution is small but strange. Aurvandill is a figure whose frozen toe Thor threw into the sky to become a star, and the same name surfaces in Old English as Earendel — the word that sent Tolkien looking for the story behind it.
| Name | Used for | Literally | Where it comes from |
|---|---|---|---|
| Aurvandill Aurvandill OWR-van-dil | male | “light-beam” a specific star | The Norse cognate of Earendel, from the same Proto-Germanic *auza-wandilaz. Snorri tells the story in Skáldskaparmál: Thor carries Aurvandil across the Élivágar rivers in a basket, one toe sticks out and freezes, and Thor breaks it off and throws it into the sky, where it becomes the star Aurvandils tá, 'Aurvandil's toe'. Which star is meant is unknown — Sirius, Venus and Rigel have all been argued. The 8th-century Lombardic Auriwandalo shows the name was in real use; Aurvandill itself is not a modern given name. On a character: A frostbitten toe becoming a star is exactly the kind of detail that makes a mythology feel real. |
| Stjarna Stjarna STYAR-na | female | “star” a star | Old Norse and modern Icelandic stjarna 'star'. Iceland's naming committee has approved it, so it is a legally usable Icelandic given name, but it is very rare and is far more familiar as a word and as a name for a horse or a cow with a white blaze. There is no medieval Norse tradition of naming children for stars — a point worth making, because Viking-themed name lists insist otherwise. |
Germanic names that mean star
Earendel is the Old English morning star, and the line that contains it is the one Tolkien called the seed of his whole legendarium. Dutch Sterre is the plain word.
| Name | Used for | Literally | Where it comes from |
|---|---|---|---|
| Earendel Ēarendel AY-uh-ren-del | male | “morning star, ray of light” morning star (Venus) | Old English, from Proto-Germanic *auza-wandilaz, usually read as 'light-beam' — and the Germanic family's one genuine star name. It survives in the Crist poem attributed to Cynewulf: 'Eala Earendel engla beorhtast', 'Hail Earendel, brightest of angels', where the Anglo-Saxon poet has turned the morning star into a figure heralding Christ. Tolkien read that line around 1913, said it struck him with 'great beauty', and built Eärendil the Mariner and eventually the whole legendarium outward from it. Cognates: Old Norse Aurvandill below, Old High German Aurendil, Lombardic Auriwandalo, all attested as real personal names. On a character: If you need a herald — the character who arrives before the change — this is the name. |
| Sterre Sterre STEH-ruh | female | “star” a star | Dutch, from Middle Dutch sterre 'star', the same Proto-Germanic *sternô that gives English star and German Stern. It has been one of the more popular Dutch girls' names since the 1990s. Worth stating plainly: apart from Sterre and Old English Earendel, the Germanic languages contributed almost nothing to the world's stock of star names. English, German and the Scandinavian languages all have a perfectly good word for star and none of them turned it into a traditional given name. |
African names that mean star
Swahili Nyota is the star, Zuhura is Venus by way of Arabic, and Kokeb is the Ge'ez and Amharic word — three unrelated languages, named individually.
| Name | Used for | Literally | Where it comes from |
|---|---|---|---|
| Nyota Nyota nee-OH-tah | female | “star” a star | Swahili nyota 'star', used across Tanzania, Kenya and Uganda. In Swahili as in Persian and Hebrew the word also carries the sense of fortune — nyota yake ing'aa, 'his star shines'. Best known in the West because Nichelle Nichols's Star Trek character was given the first name Nyota, chosen from a Swahili dictionary. A genuine given name, and one of the few honestly verifiable African entries in a field full of invented ones. |
| Kokeb ኮከብ KOH-keb | unisex | “star” a star | Amharic and Tigrinya ኮከብ kokeb 'star' — and note what it is: a Semitic word, the same root as Hebrew kokhav and Arabic kawkab, because Amharic and Tigrinya are Semitic languages of the Horn of Africa. Used as a given name in Ethiopia and Eritrea, and in compounds such as Kokebe Tsebah, 'morning star'. Kokob is the Tigrinya spelling. |
| Zuhura Zuhura zoo-HOO-rah | female | “Venus” planet | Swahili Zuhura is the planet Venus, borrowed from Arabic al-Zuhara through the long Indian Ocean contact that gave Swahili much of its vocabulary — Alhamisi for Thursday, saa for hour, and the planets. A common female name on the Swahili coast and in Zanzibar. Listed under African rather than Arabic because it is a Swahili name with an Arabic ancestor, which is a different thing from being an Arabic name. |
Modern English star names
Modern English adds little beyond Star itself and the elaborated Starla. Orion is in this group by association only: the constellation is famous, but the origin of the name is genuinely unknown, and the Sumerian derivation people repeat is a guess.
| Name | Used for | Literally | Where it comes from |
|---|---|---|---|
| Star STAR | female | “star” a star | Old English steorra, from Proto-Germanic *sternô, from the same Indo-European *h₂stḗr as everything else in this family. As a given name it is a modern word-name, in light use in the English-speaking world since the 19th century and chiefly American. Starr is usually a surname first — in England a house-sign name, from a dwelling marked with a star — which is why it turns up as a middle name more often than a first. |
| Starla STAR-luh | female | “star (elaborated)” a star | A 20th-century American coinage: Star plus the -la ending that also produced Darla, Marla and Carla. No etymology beyond that, and no history before about the 1940s — which is worth saying, because it is regularly sold as an 'ancient name meaning star'. It means star because someone built it to. |
| Orion Ὠρίων oh-RY-un | male | “unknown” constellation / asterism | A correction, because Orion is at the top of every star-name list with a confident meaning attached. The truth is that nobody knows what it means. Behind the Name and etymological dictionaries record it as of unknown origin; the most-cited guess is Akkadian Uru-anna, 'the light of heaven', and there are Greek attempts to link it to ourein and to horion 'boundary', none of them accepted. Orion the hunter is set in the sky as the best-known constellation in the world, chased by Scorpius; his shoulder is Betelgeuse and his foot is Rigel, both on this page under their real Arabic names. So: a constellation, a great name, and an honest blank where the meaning should be. On a character: The default 'big sky name' for a hunter or a soldier; overused, but it earns it. |
Names commonly listed as meaning star (that don't)
These appear on star name lists everywhere. Each is a real name worth using, but not for this meaning. Several got here purely because they look like a Latin word they are not related to.
| Name | Commonly claimed | What it actually means |
|---|---|---|
| Astrid | Latin astra, 'star', 'star-like', 'divine star' | Old Norse Ástríðr, from áss 'god' + fríðr 'beautiful, beloved' — 'divinely beautiful'. The same elements our Norse and dwarven generator data already uses. The resemblance to Latin astra is pure coincidence between two unrelated language families, and it may be the single most common error in this whole topic. Astra, Astraea and Asteria are the real astra- names; Astrid is not one of them. |
| Stellan | masculine of Stella, 'starry', 'calm star' | Unknown. Behind the Name records the Swedish name as of uncertain meaning, perhaps related to Old Norse stilling 'calm' or perhaps of German origin. Latin stella is not among the proposals. It looks like Stella and is not related to it — the name simply predates and sidesteps the Latin word. |
| Nova | star, new star, starlight | Latin novus, 'new', feminine nova. A nova is so called because it looks like a NEW star appearing where none was; the word is about novelty, not luminosity. Our light page carries the same ruling and the same reasoning. |
| Stella Maris | the etymology of Stella — 'star of the sea' | A Marian title, and one built on a copying error. Jerome, following Eusebius, glossed Hebrew Miriam as stilla maris, 'a drop of the sea'; a later scribe wrote stella, and 'star of the sea' was born. Stella the given name comes from Latin stella directly, via Philip Sidney in 1591. The title is real and old, but it is not where the name comes from. |
| Esther (as a settled 'star' name) | Persian for 'star', full stop | Genuinely disputed — Persian stāra, the goddess Ishtar, and a Hebrew reading from s-t-r 'to hide' are all live, and the Book of Esther itself gives Hadassah, 'myrtle', as her Hebrew name. We list Esther on the page because the star reading is a real candidate, but any list that presents it as fact is overstating the evidence. |
| Hadassah | star, by association with Esther | Hebrew hadas, 'myrtle'. It is the other name in Esther 2:7, not a synonym for it. A plant name. |
| Sidra / Sidrah | Latin, 'like a star', 'of the stars' | Arabic sidra, the lote tree — as in Sidrat al-Muntahā, the tree at the boundary of the seventh heaven in the Mi'raj narrative. The 'Latin star' gloss appears to be a baby-name-site invention built on a resemblance to sidus / sidera. Sidra is a real and meaningful name; it is just not a star. |
| Zahra / Zara | Venus, bright star | Arabic zahra, 'flower, blossom', and by extension 'radiance' — the epithet of Fatima al-Zahra. The Arabic name of Venus is al-Zuhara, a different word from the same z-h-r root. Zara is a separate name again, usually traced to Arabic zahrah or to Hebrew Zerah. Same root, different words, and the planet belongs to only one of them. |
| Suhayla / Sohaila | feminine of Suhayl, 'star, Canopus' | Arabic sahl 'level, smooth, easy' with the feminine diminutive — 'gentle, easy'. The masculine Suhayl acquired the star sense because Canopus was called that; the feminine did not inherit it, and on its own it is a smoothness word. |
| Vega (as a Spanish name) | star, from the star in Lyra | Two unrelated words spelled alike. Spanish vega is a water meadow or fertile lowland, of pre-Roman Iberian origin, and that is the common surname. The star Vega is Arabic al-wāqiʿ, 'the falling one'. A Spanish Vega is named after a field. |
| Tara (Irish) | Irish name meaning star | The Hill of Tara is Irish Teamhair, usually explained as a place of assembly or a height with a wide view. The star word tārā is Sanskrit and unrelated; Irish for star is réalta. Two languages, one spelling in English, and the meanings get merged constantly. |
| Sita | star | Sanskrit sītā, 'furrow' — Sita in the Ramayana is found in a ploughed field, which is the whole point of the name. The resemblance to Persian-derived Sitara is accidental. |
| Seren (as an ancient Welsh name) | a traditional Celtic name meaning star | The word is genuinely ancient and genuinely means star; the NAME is modern, a 20th-century Welsh coinage. We list it on the page for the word, with the date stated. Also note it is inherited from Proto-Celtic, not borrowed from Latin stella as is often repeated. |
| Skye / Skyla / Skylar | sky, and thence star | Skye is the Hebridean island, whose name is Gaelic An t-Eilean Sgitheanach, of disputed meaning and nothing to do with the English word sky; Skylar is from the Dutch surname Schuyler, 'scholar'. Neither is celestial, and even the sky is not a star. |
| Celine / Celia / Selina | heavenly, of the stars | Celia is from the Roman gens name Caelius; Céline is from Latin Caelina or a short form of Marcellina; Selina collides with Greek Selene, the moon. At their most generous these are sky names, which is the sense we file Celeste under. None of them names a star. |
| Zora / Zorya | morning star | Slavic zora, 'dawn'. The Zoryas of Slavic folklore are dawn goddesses. The Slavic morning-star names are Danica and Zornitsa, both of which are on the page; Zora on its own is the daylight arriving, not the planet. |
| Yıldırım | star, from Turkish yıldız | Turkish yıldırım, 'lightning, thunderbolt' — the epithet of Sultan Bayezid I. It rhymes with yıldız and means something else entirely. |
| Roxana / Roxanne | bright star, star of the dawn | Old Iranian *rauxšnā, 'bright, shining' — a light word, which is why it is on our light page and not this one. No star in it. |
| Bar Kokhba | a Hebrew given name meaning 'son of the star' | An epithet, not a name. Shimon ben Kosevah was hailed as bar kokhbā by supporters invoking Numbers 24:17 during the revolt of 132–135; after it failed, opponents punned it into bar koziba, 'son of the lie'. Kokhav and Kochava are the real Hebrew star names. |
| Sterling | little star | A coin word. The OED's preferred derivation is Old English *steorling, a penny marked with a star, but Philip Grierson pointed out that starred Norman pennies were minted only from 1077 to 1080 and were a tiny share of the coinage, and proposed *stēre 'strong' instead. Even on the star reading it means a unit of silver, not a star — and the old 'Easterling' story is long discredited. |
| Hoshi-sounding Japanese names (Hikaru, Akari, Kirara) | star, starlight, sparkle | Hikaru is 光, 'light'; Akari is 明かり, 'light, brightness', already excluded on our moon page; Kirara is a glitter word, 煌 or 雲母 'mica'. In Japanese the kanji decides the meaning, and none of these is 星. The genuine article is Hoshi, Hoshiko, Seiya or Subaru. |
| Twinkle, Starlight, Starlet, Stargazer | names meaning star | English common nouns and compounds with no naming tradition behind them, unlike Star and Stella, which have one. Twinkle does see real use in India as a nickname-turned-name, which is worth knowing, but it is not an etymology. |
Choosing one for a character
Decide first whether you want the word or the object. A word-name — Stella, Tara, Seren, Najma — behaves like any other name: it is soft, it is common enough not to distract, and the meaning sits quietly underneath. A star's proper name behaves differently. Vega, Altair and Rigel are short, hard and slightly technical, which is exactly why science fiction reaches for them, and why they can feel out of place in a pastoral fantasy.
Watch the register of the borrowed ones. Taking an Arabic star name for a character with no connection to that world is common in science fiction and rarely remarked on, but it reads better when the naming system of your setting explains it — a fleet that names ships from an old catalogue, a culture that kept the medieval names. The name then carries history instead of decoration.
And if what you want is the constellation rather than the star, say so in the name. The Pleiades alone give you Thurayya, Parvin, Krittika, Subaru and Ülker across five languages, all meaning the same cluster of stars — which is a reminder that everyone has been looking at the same sky and naming it separately.
FAQ about names that mean star
What name means star?
Straightforwardly: Latin Stella and its descendants Estelle and Estrella, Persian Setareh, Sanskrit Tara, Arabic Najma, Hebrew Kochava, Slavic Zvezda, Welsh Seren, Turkish Yıldız, Japanese Hoshi, Korean Byeol and Swahili Nyota. All of those are simply the word for star in their language, used as a name.
Why are so many real star names Arabic?
Because Ptolemy's star catalogue reached medieval Europe through Arabic translations, and European astronomers took the Arabic descriptions with it. The Arabic phrases were long — al-nasr al-wāqiʿ, the falling eagle — so they were clipped into single words like Vega. Roughly two thirds of the traditional bright-star names in use today came into English by that route.
Does Astrid mean star?
No, and this is the most common mistake in the topic. Astrid looks like Latin astra but comes from Old Norse áss, a god, plus fríðr, beautiful — so it means something closer to divinely beautiful. The resemblance is a coincidence of spelling.
Does Esther mean star?
It might, and it might not. The name is often traced to Persian sitāra, star, or to the goddess Ishtar, but the etymology is genuinely unsettled, and the Book of Esther itself gives the heroine the Hebrew name Hadassah. This page presents the dispute rather than picking the prettier answer.
What does Betelgeuse actually mean?
Not what almost every source says. The Arabic was yad al-jawzāʾ, the hand of al-Jawzāʾ. A thirteenth-century copyist misread the initial letter, which turned it into Bedalgeuze, and later European scholars assumed the b was original and reconstructed an Arabic phrase that had never existed — ibṭ al-jawzāʾ, the armpit. That invented gloss is the one still repeated today.
Is Nova a star name?
Not as a meaning. Nova is Latin for new, and a nova is called that because a new light appears where none was visible before. It is a lovely name, but it means new, and our page of names that mean light excludes it for the same reason.
Sources
Every etymology on this page was checked against reference works rather than other name lists. Where sources disagree, the entry says so.
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