Naming · namakarana
The birth syllable, and where the custom comes from
Many families begin a child's name with the syllable of the Moon's pada at birth. Enter the birth, or the nakshatra and pada, and see the syllable in your own script - with its history, and the older naming rules of the Grihya Sutras.
All the syllables of this nakshatra and rashi
Families who follow the rashi rather than the pada choose from all nine syllables of the Moon's sign.
Where the syllables come from
The table of 108 syllables is Narapati's Shatapada-chakra, in his Svarodaya (Gujarat, 12th century). He made it for the opposite purpose: to find a person's nakshatra from the first letter of a name they already had. Muhurta Martanda (1572) and Muhurta Chintamani (1600) use it the same way.
Choosing a baby's first syllable from the birth pada is a later custom: it is first found in print in a 1928 editor's note to Muhurta Chintamani and a 1932 Hindi handbook. No Grihya Sutra, nor Manu or Yajnavalkya, mentions it. It is a lovely family tradition - and a choice, not a rule.
The lists disagree in a few places. Shravana is khi khu khe kho in Narapati's table; many modern lists give it Abhijit's ju je jo kha instead. Names rarely begin with nga, nya or the retroflex na, and Telugu lists write ba for bha.
What the older texts say about naming
- The day: the 10th day after birth (Paraskara, Apastamba), the 10th or 12th (Manu 2.30), the 11th (Yajnavalkya 1.12), the 12th (Hiranyakeshin) - or after 10 nights, 100 nights or a year (Gobhila).
- A boy's name of two or four syllables, beginning with a voiced sound and ending in a long vowel (Paraskara 1.17; Ashvalayana 1.15); a girl's name of an odd number of syllables (Ashvalayana, Apastamba).
- Manu 2.33: a girl's name easy to say, pleasing, auspicious, ending in a long vowel, and holding a blessing.
- Some Grihya Sutras give a second, private name taken from the birth nakshatra or its deity - such as Karttika for a child born in Krittika (Hiranyakeshin 2.1.4).
Narapati, Svarodaya, Shatapada-chakra vv. 1-11 (1934 and 1946 printings); Grihya Sutras tr. Oldenberg, Sacred Books of the East 29 and 30 (1886, 1892); Manu tr. Buhler (1886). The Moon's position is computed for the exact birth moment by our own engine.