Sikh girls’ names
Names from the Sikh tradition, drawn largely from Punjabi and from Gurmukhi scripture.
Sikh naming contains one feature that nothing else in this library shares.
Since 1699, when Guru Gobind Singh established the Khalsa, Sikh women have taken Kaur and Sikh men Singh — a deliberate replacement of caste surnames, which had encoded exactly the hierarchy the Gurus rejected. Kaur is usually rendered as princess or lioness. Its precise etymology is debated, but its purpose is not: it is an assertion that a woman's standing does not descend from her father or her husband.
The given names themselves are drawn largely from the Guru Granth Sahib, and the traditional method of choosing one is to open the scripture at random and take the first letter of the hymn on that page. This is called the hukam, and it means the initial letter is given rather than chosen.
The vocabulary is Punjabi with heavy Sanskrit and Persian layers, reflecting Punjab's position between two worlds. What is most striking to an outside reader is how many Sikh names are used for both sons and daughters without alteration — Harpreet, Manpreet, Jaspreet, Amandeep, Gurpreet. Gender is carried by Kaur or Singh, not by the given name, which makes Sikh naming among the most genuinely gender-neutral systems in use anywhere.