Queen

Sanskrit rājñī and Latin rēgīna are cognates. Not lookalikes, not borrowings — genuine cousins, both descended from the Proto-Indo-European root reconstructed as *h₃rēǵs, a ruler or one who rules straight. The same root gives Old Irish rí, the -rix in Gaulish names like Vercingetorix, and, at some remove, the English word right in its older sense of straight or correct.

So Rani in Punjab and Regina in Rome are the same name, separated by four thousand years and five thousand miles, and neither tradition ever knew it.

Greek took an unrelated route with basilissa, from basileus, king — a word of uncertain and possibly pre-Greek origin, which is to say it may have been in the Aegean before Greek arrived. Arabic malika belongs to the Semitic root M-L-K, which also gives Hebrew melekh; these two are cousins in the same way shalom and salām are. That root travelled widely with Islam, reaching Urdu, Swahili and Hausa.

What is worth noticing is how much of the nobility vocabulary in girls' naming is not about rank at all. A great many of these names mean noble in the sense of bearing, conduct or generosity rather than title — the Germanic adal- element behind Adelaide and Alice among them. The wish being expressed is usually about how a daughter carries herself, not what office she holds.