Entry № 10666 · Scythian origin

Tomyris Tomyris — Meaning, Origin & Baby Name Popularity

/ toh-MEE-ris /
Gender
Girl
Origin
Scythian
Meaning
"Massagetae queen who killed Cyrus the Great"
Syllables
3
First recorded
Ancient (Scythian)

A name that means "massagetae queen who killed cyrus the great".

Tomyris (c. 530 BCE) was the Scythian-Massagetae queen who killed Cyrus the Great of Persia in 530 BCE — avenging her son's death by Cyrus's army. According to Herodotus, she had Cyrus's severed head placed in a wineskin filled with human blood — saying "You were thirsty for blood — now drink your fill." The first nomadic queen to defeat a Persian Achaemenid army.

Featured in Herodotus's Histories Book 1.

Massagetae queen who killed Cyrus the Great — a Scythian name.

The name in its native script.

Τόμυρις
Transliteration
Tómuris
Pronunciation
/ təˈmɪər.ɪs /
Root
Grammatical form

Where Tomyris stands.

Tomyris 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.

Tomyriss before her.

Real people
Tomyris
Massagetae queen.
c. 530 BCE
In fiction
Tomyris
Subject of paintings by Rubens, Allori, Mattia Preti.

Names connected to Tomyris.

The number behind Tomyris.

2

The Peacemaker

In Pythagorean numerology the letters of Tomyris reduce to 2, The Peacemaker. This is a traditional interpretive system, not a factual claim about the name.