Jain girls’ names
Names from the Jain tradition, rooted in Sanskrit and Prakrit.
Jain naming draws on Sanskrit and Prakrit and overlaps heavily with Hindu naming, which is unsurprising given the shared linguistic inheritance. What distinguishes it is emphasis.
The central Jain virtues supply a distinct vocabulary: ahimsa, non-violence; aparigraha, non-attachment; satya, truth; kshama, forgiveness. Names built on these carry a doctrinal weight that the same roots do not always have in Hindu usage.
The twenty-four Tirthankaras and the figures around them provide a second source, and the mothers of the Tirthankaras in particular are commemorated in girls' naming.
Jain communities in Gujarat, Rajasthan and Karnataka each inflect this differently, and a Jain name from one region can look quite unlike one from another while drawing on the same texts. The library holds a small number of these, and we would rather present a short honest list than pad it with Hindu names that happen to be used by some Jain families.