Sanskrit Names

Amit Varma posts about Sanskrit names. As I remember it, one oddity of Sanskrit grammer is that gender is determined by the form of the word rather than the sex of the person. What I mean is, the first part of my name – Ravi is supposed to be pronounced with a short i at the end. That makes it male. But if my mom had named me Raveeee, then you’d have to address me as female, even though to the best of my knowledge I’ve been male all my life. And remember Sanskrit has a neutral gender too. One of the words for “wife” in Sanskrit is kalatram which, because of its form (ending in “um” ) is neuter. So if refer to your wife as kalatram, you’d have to point to her as “it”. (Actually, there is a word in for wife which is male – I don’t remember it)

More complications. How a noun ends in Sanskrit depends on the case. So if I am the object of a sentence (Amit shot Ravi) you’d have to call me Ravim (Amitaha shot Ravim.) In other words, google searches would become impossible in Sanskrit.

24 thoughts on “Sanskrit Names”

  2. Language Nazi, pah! A=Angry.
    >>So if refer to your wife as kalatram, you’d have to point to her as “it”.
    In English, yes, you’d refer to it in the neuter gender. However, the reference to the gender becomes obvious when you use it in a sentence. Sorry, my knowledge of Sanskrit grammar (I spelt it right, MadMan) is too faint now for me to give you an example of using Kalatram in a sentence to show that it refers to the female gender.

  3. Actually, there is a word in for wife which is male – I don’t remember it

    That might be “Bharya” — but from the form it seems it is femaile, which is what a wife should be if nothing is seriously wrong with the male!

  5. It’s the same in Latin, where nouns also are declined. If “Ravir” were a Latin word (I assume of second declension), it would go:

    Nominative: Ravi (subject in a sentence)
    Accusative: Ravim (object in a sentence)
    Genitive: Ravis (“of Ravi”)
    Dative: Ravi (“to/for Ravi”)
    Ablative: Rave (“by/with/from Ravi”)

    Latin also has 3 genders. Conceivably, Latin inherited these characteristics from Sanskrit via Aryan, and westward population migrations.

  6. ” How a noun ends in Sanskrit depends on the case. So if I am the object of a sentence (Amit shot Ravi) you’d have to call me Ravim (Amitaha shot Ravim.) In other words, google searches would become impossible in Sanskrit.”

    To conclude the feasibility of googling in an alternate parallel universe where Sanskrit supplants English is futile. Since the nouns and verbs themselves are inflected as opposed to having prefixes and suffices, maybe in that universe, google would be doing NLP as opposed to using an artificial search string containing +/- characters. Just a thought.

  7. In German, the word for girl (Madchen …not positive about the spelling there) is of masculine gender, and as far as I know no one who speaks German seems to have a problem with it. It is only in English where there is such a rigid notion that grammatical gender must correspond with biological gender.

    I have searched an internet Latin database with inflected forms before, and it generally works by recognising all inflections as the same word, so a search for “Ravi” would return “Ravi”, “Ravis”, “Ravim”, “Rave”, etc. as would a search for any of the other forms. Google actually does this too, so if you search “name” your results may include: “name”, “names”, “naming”, “named” etc. We just don’t notice it as much.

  8. Kalatra has been used by Kalidasa in Purva-Meghdoota:
    …Khinnavidyutakalatrah” poem 42.

    The German word Mädchen is not maaculine, but rather neutral.

  9. Hi could you give me a Sanskrit name which stands for ” Fathers and Sons”. Or something that denotes from ” Fathers to Sons” or ” Generations” ….. thanks

  10. Hi

    My name is a sanskrit name, it is Jivanya, but i do not know the meaning of it, and i would like to find out, So does anyone know what ‘Jivanya’ means?

    Thanks

  11. Hello,
    Swamiji Nithyananda gave me a Sanskrit name. I am meditating and researching it’s meaning. Any insight?

  14. hello. Im interestet in sanskrit language .ıt’s pronounce is nice ,pretty I like to this language and I try to find sanskrit grammer books. I like that you can help me. by .Khuda muhafız. mera nam HAlime hai like this.

  15. hi… yup, another what does my name mean question, google doesn’t seem to help…. help anyone?? (name’s ayushka by the way)

  17. I am searching for my baby gal name with combination of De,Du,Do,Di. If anybody helps me out that would be great to me.

  19. we have named our daughter-ayushka and in a sanskrit dictionary it meant “love for life”. root word being ‘ayush’ which means ‘life’.

  20. Ayushka, means one with a long life. Actually it’s derived from Ayush, meaning youth .. so one who maintains his youthfulness is who you are..

  21. Hello does anyone know the meaning of Avirgyan, gyan is knowledge, avir ,continuous or incessant?? help would be much appreciated, Thanks

  23. The word for wife which is male is: Bhaaryaa! Simply because it ends with ‘aa’, the ‘aa’ maatra!

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