Persian Girl Names That Came From Poetry
Shirin, Tehmina and the heroines of the Shahnameh: Persian girl names that began as literary characters, with meanings and full entries.
Persian naming is unusual in how much of it comes out of books. Ferdowsi finished the Shahnameh around the year 1010, and its heroines are still being named after a thousand years later; Nizami's romances added more. These are characters who became ordinary names — a pattern with few parallels at this scale anywhere else.
Alongside the literary names sits the fixed imagery of Persian verse — the moon, the rose, the nightingale, gold — which compounds endlessly into names. The Persian names in this library:
- Afsaneh — A legend, fairy tale
- Afsoon — Charm, enchantment
- Akhtar — Star (Begum Akhtar, Queen of Ghazal)
- Anahid — Armenian Anahita (goddess of water)
- Anahita — Immaculate, unstained
- Beste — Musical composition (Turkish)
- Bibi — Lady / mistress (Bibi Andersson, Bergman muse)
- Buse — Kiss (Turkish-Persian)
- Chand Bibi — Moon lady (Ahmadnagar regent vs Akbar)
- Daena — Conscience-soul (Zoroastrian)
- Darya — Sea
- Dilara — Beloved (Ottoman heritage + Turkish popular)
- Donya — World, universe
- Farzana — Wise / intelligent (South Asian heritage)
- Gulnara — Pomegranate flower (Central Asian heritage)
- Hamida — Praiseworthy (Akbar's mother)
- Harnaaz — God's gift (iconic Harnaaz Sandhu Miss Universe 2021
- Hester — Star (Hawthorne's Hester Prynne
- Hürrem — Joyful / cheerful (Ottoman queen Roxelana)
- Khushbu — Fragrance (Khushbu Sundar - Tamil cinema + politicia
- Lale — Tulip
- Laleh — Tulip
- Mahal — Palace (Mumtaz Mahal - Taj Mahal namesake)
- Mahtab — Moonlight
- Maral — Red deer (Persian-Turkic)
- Mehreen — Sun-like / iconic Pakistani filmmaker
- Mihrimah — Sun + moon (iconic Ottoman princess)
- Mumtaz — Distinguished (Taj Mahal's Mumtaz)
- Nargis — Daffodil / narcissus (Nargis, 1957 Mother India)
- Parveen — Pleiades star cluster (Parveen Shakir Urdu poet)
- Roksana — Bright dawn (Polish form of Roxana)
- Roxane — Dawn (Roxane Gay
- Rumi — Roman, beauty
- Sahar — Dawn
- Sanam — Beloved (Sanam Saeed - Pakistani Zindagi Gulzar Hai)
- Setareh — Star
- Shabana — Nocturnal / lovely (Shabana Azmi, 5 National Film Aw
- Shabnam — Morning dew
- Shadi — Joy / happiness (Arabic heritage)
- Shaheen — Royal falcon (iconic Iqbal poetry)
Each entry gives the meaning, pronunciation and, where it applies, the literary source.