Akhtar (اختر) is the Persian word for "star." Begum Akhtar (1914-1974) — born Akhtari Bai Faizabadi — was the "Queen of Ghazal" of Hindustani classical music, also a master of dadra and thumri light-classical forms. Recipient of the Padma Bhushan and Padma Shri, awarded the Sangeet Natak Akademi Award. Her soulful voice — recorded across the 1930s-60s — remains the gold standard of ghazal singing. Born Muslim in Faizabad, she shaped the Hindi film music of the 1940s.
Honored on a 1994 Indian postage stamp.
Akhtar does not currently appear in the US Social Security Administration's top 1,000 girls' names, so we don't publish a US rank or birth count for it. That says nothing about the name's standing elsewhere in the world — only that it sits outside the ranked US data we rely on.
In Pythagorean numerology the letters of Akhtar reduce to 5, The Seeker. This is a traditional interpretive system, not a factual claim about the name.