Baby Names Meaning Moon — with Origins

The moon shows up in naming across almost every culture we have data for, usually for the same two reasons: it is the clearest thing in a night sky, and it has long stood for beauty, calm and quiet strength rather than the loudness of the sun. In Sanskrit the moon is Chandra or Chand, the root of a whole family of names — Chandrika, Induma, Sudha (nectar of the moon) — used for both the moon god and the qualities associated with him.

Arabic gives Qamar (moon) and Hilal (crescent moon), both used for boys and girls and popular across the Middle East, North Africa and South Asia; Persian and Turkish add Mahtab and Aytaç, while Hebrew's Yerach and Levana carry the same idea. English and European naming arrive at the same meaning from a different direction, through Luna (Latin), Selene (Greek) and Cynthia (another name for the Greek moon goddess Artemis) — all three have surged back into fashion over the last decade.

Below are the names in our catalogue whose meaning includes moon, moonlight, night or crescent, across every origin, most common first.