Entry № 8889 · Persian origin

Roxana Roxana — Meaning, Origin & Baby Name Popularity

/ rok-SAN-ah /
Gender
Girl
Origin
Persian
Meaning
"Bright, luminous"
Syllables
3
First recorded
Ancient (Persian)

A name that means "bright, luminous".

Roxana comes from the Old Persian Raoxshna, meaning "luminous" or "shining one" — from the same Indo-European root that gives English the word "radiance." The name was made famous by Roxana of Bactria (4th century BCE), the wife of Alexander the Great.

Roxana has been continuously used in Persian-speaking countries for two and a half millennia. Today the name sits in the U.S. top 800 and is rising — particularly in the Iranian diaspora.

Luminous. The same name carried by Alexander's queen, twenty-three centuries old.

The name in its native script.

رخشانه
Transliteration
Roxshāna
Pronunciation
/ ɾɔxˈsaː.na /
Root
Grammatical form

Where Roxana stands.

Roxana 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.

Roxanas before her.

Real people
Roxana of Bactria
Wife of Alexander the Great. Mother of Alexander IV of Macedon.
c. 340 – 310 BCE
In fiction
Roxane
Heroine of Edmond Rostand's Cyrano de Bergerac.
1897 play
Roxana
Title heroine of Daniel Defoe's Roxana.
1724 novel

Names connected to Roxana.

The number behind Roxana.

1

The Leader

In Pythagorean numerology the letters of Roxana reduce to 1, The Leader. This is a traditional interpretive system, not a factual claim about the name.