Bengali Baby Names with Meanings

Every Bengali child has two names: the bhalo naam (good name) that goes on certificates — Arijit, Sourav, Debashish, Priyanka — and the daak naam, the pet name the family actually uses, which is often a sound rather than a word: Tumpa, Rimi, Babu, Mou, Jhilik. This page lists the formal names, but you will spot plenty of daak naam favourites in the modern section too.

Bengali Hindu names lean on Sanskrit with a distinct Bengali pronunciation (Subhash becomes Shubhash, Basu becomes Bose) and a taste for poetry — names meaning cloud, river, moonlight and monsoon are everywhere, a legacy of Tagore and the Bengal renaissance. Bengali Muslim names across the border in Bangladesh draw on Arabic and Persian through Bangla.

Names below are the Bengali and Bangladeshi entries in our catalogue, most common first. Use the finder's tradition filter to keep to Hindu or Muslim names only.