Entry № 9286 · Persian origin

Scheherazade Scheherazade — Meaning, Origin & Baby Name Popularity

/ sheh-HEH-rah-zad /
Gender
Girl
Origin
Persian
Meaning
"Of noble lineage (frame narrator of One Thousand and One Nights)"
Syllables
4
First recorded
Medieval (Persian)

A name that means "of noble lineage (frame narrator of one thousand and one nights)".

Scheherazade (Persian Shahrazād, from shahr = city + āzād = noble, free) is the *frame narrator of Alf laylah wa-laylah (One Thousand and One Nights / The Arabian Nights). The vizier's daughter who volunteers to marry the misogynist King Shahryar — who has been killing each new bride at dawn since being betrayed by his first wife — and who saves her own life and the lives of all future Persian women by telling the king cliffhanging tales for 1,001 nights. Eventually the king falls in love with her and abandons his murderous custom. One of the most famous female narrators in world literature* — and the source of Aladdin, Ali Baba, Sinbad, and countless other tales.

Subject of Rimsky-Korsakov's symphonic suite Scheherazade (1888).

Of noble lineage. Told One Thousand and One Nights of stories to save her life and the lives of future Persian brides.

The name in its native script.

شهرزاد
Transliteration
Shahrazād
Pronunciation
/ ʃəˌhɛr.əˈzɑːd /
Root
Grammatical form

Where Scheherazade stands.

Scheherazade 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.

Scheherazades before her.

Real people
Scheherazade
Frame narrator of Arabian Nights.
In fiction
Scheherazade
Rimsky-Korsakov's Scheherazade.
1888

Names connected to Scheherazade.

The number behind Scheherazade.

4

The Builder

In Pythagorean numerology the letters of Scheherazade reduce to 4, The Builder. This is a traditional interpretive system, not a factual claim about the name.