Sikh Boy Names with Meanings

A Sikh boy's name is decided in a specific way: at the naam karan ceremony the Guru Granth Sahib is opened at random, and the first letter of the first word on the left-hand page becomes the letter the family must name from. Whatever letter comes up, the child then takes Singh (lion) as a second name — a tradition started by Guru Gobind Singh in 1699 so that a Sikh's name would carry no clue to caste. That is why boys' names here cluster so heavily around a handful of starting letters rather than spreading evenly across the alphabet.

Most names are compounds built from the same small set of spiritual roots — Gur (the Guru), Har (God), Preet and Jot (love and light), Deep (a lamp), Man (the mind or heart), Amrit (nectar, immortality) — which is how a name like Gurpreet, Harjot, Amandeep or Jaspreet is built and read almost like a short prayer. Older, more warrior-flavoured names such as Ranjit (victorious in battle) and Balwinder sit alongside newer, shorter picks parents now favour — Angad, Ekam, Kabir, Karan.

Below are the boys across our Sikh-tradition catalogue, most common first. If you already have your letter from the Guru Granth Sahib, the letter pages on this site filter to Sikh tradition too.