Sikh Girl Names with Meanings

Sikhism deliberately built gender out of most of its names. Guru Gobind Singh gave every Sikh son Singh (lion) and every Sikh daughter Kaur (princess) as a second name in 1699, precisely so that a name alone would reveal neither caste nor, for the most part, sex — which is why a majority of the names on this page (Amrit, Simran, Harpreet, Jasleen, Gurpreet, Navjot) are also on our Sikh Boy Names page, worn by sons and daughters alike. The letter itself still comes from chance: the Guru Granth Sahib is opened at random at the naam karan ceremony, and the child's name must start with whatever letter falls on the first word of the left-hand page.

Where a distinctly feminine layer does exist, it tends to describe the child in devotional terms rather than physical ones: Baani (the divine word, referring to the Guru's own hymns), Simran (meditation, remembrance of God's name) and Jasleen (absorbed in singing God's praises) all name a spiritual act rather than a quality like beauty. Compounds built on Har (God), Preet and Jot (love and light), and Deep (a lamp) — Harpreet, Amanjot, Gurdeep — read the same way for a girl as for a boy, which many Sikh parents see as the point: the name praises God, not the child's gender.

Below are the girls and unisex names across our Sikh-tradition catalogue, most common first. If the Guru Granth Sahib has already given you a letter, the letter pages on this site filter to Sikh tradition too.