Entry № 7535 · Ojibwe origin

Nokomis Nokomis — Meaning, Origin & Baby Name Popularity

/ no-KOH-mis /
Gender
Girl
Origin
Ojibwe
Meaning
"Grandmother (Hiawatha's grandmother in Algonquin tradition)"
Syllables
3
First recorded
Modern (Ojibwe)

A name that means "grandmother (hiawatha's grandmother in algonquin tradition)".

Nokomis is the Ojibwe-Algonquin word for "my grandmother," specifically maternal grandmother — used both as kinship term and personal name. In Algonquin and Ojibwe tradition, Nokomis is the moon-mother and grandmother figure who fell from the sky world and raised her grandson Manabozho (the trickster-creator). *Henry Wadsworth Longfellow drew on this tradition for The Song of Hiawatha (1855), where Nokomis raises Hiawatha after his mother Wenonah's death — "Daughter of the Moon, Nokomis." The name has been used by several towns and lakes in Minnesota* (Lake Nokomis in Minneapolis) and the Atlantic-coast resort community of Nokomis, Florida.

Featured throughout Longfellow's Hiawatha and Anishinaabe oral tradition.

Grandmother. Hiawatha's moon-grandmother; fell from the sky world to raise the trickster-creator.

The name in its native script.

Nookomis
Transliteration
Nookomis
Pronunciation
/ noʊˈkoʊ.mɪs /
Root
Grammatical form

Where Nokomis stands.

Nokomis 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.

Nokomiss before her.

Real people
Nokomis
Algonquin-Ojibwe moon-grandmother.
In fiction
Nokomis
Longfellow's The Song of Hiawatha.
1855

Names connected to Nokomis.

The number behind Nokomis.

6

The Nurturer

In Pythagorean numerology the letters of Nokomis reduce to 6, The Nurturer. This is a traditional interpretive system, not a factual claim about the name.