The Ultimate South Indian Baby Girl Naming Ideas and Tips
Believe me when I say that your responsibilities have already started. You will have to take on and fulfil many responsibilities even before you get to hold your girl in your hand.
Becoming a dad is a major and massive milestone in your life, so first, kudos to you and your partner! 🎉
Believe me when I say that your responsibilities have already started. You will have to take on and fulfil many responsibilities even before you get to hold your girl in your hand. One challenging yet fruitful responsibility is finding the perfect baby name for your girl. But since I have been there and done that for my baby boy, I am here to help you and guide you to find the perfect name for your girl.
If you're after South Indian Baby boy names, check out my article here. If not, continue reading.
What will you gain from this blog?
You will learn how to create the perfect search criteria for your girl’s name, including exploring various baby names to find the ideal match.
You will learn about where to research South Indian names online and how to efficiently search for them using the search criteria you have created in the previous step.
Using our free, professionally designed printables, you will learn how to shortlist names from your research effectively. You can use them with your partner and share them with your friends and family for suggestions.
Our curated list of Parenting must reads.
Bonus: Free and paid members will also have access to our meticulously curated, ready-to-name, tried-and-tested South Indian Girl Names shortlist.
Our Curated List of Parenting Must-Reads
The Book You Wish Your Parents Had Read 👉 here.
Raising Good Humans: A Mindful Guide 👉 here.
The Montessori Baby 👉 here.
Our Namefinding Journey
My son was born last year, in 2023, and I remember my wife and I spending days ideating, researching, shortlisting and finding the right name for our boy. I know how much time we spent, and I know the process is very similar for a baby girl, so I want to save you the struggle and time by helping you find the perfect name for your girl.
I remember that when we first started researching, we were overwhelmed by the number of blogs and websites offering 100 or 200 name ideas for boys and girls. Oh boy, researching through 200 names is not easy, especially when only a handful of them are barely good.
We, being South Indians at heart, wanted a name that would sound "Southy", if that is even a word, and yet easy to pronounce for Aussies, as our son will be raised here. So, instead of jumping right into looking at names, we decided to agree on a perfect search criteria.
The Perfect Search Criteria
There are no perfect search criteria, but we can come close. The idea is that you and your partner need to agree on certain aspects of the name before even starting to look at names and name ideas and come up with a checklist.
Does it sound "Southy" enough?
Does the name sound "Southy" or "South Indian" enough to your liking? This is a personal preference, but sometimes an important one. Discuss with your partner on each other's preference for this search criterion and come up with an importance score from 5 to 1 – A score of 5 means it's super important to you, and a score of 1 means it's least important to you.
Our criterion score looked like this:
Does it ring a bell?
The next criterion is exactly what the title says: is this name familiar? Do your or your partner's friends or immediate family have the same name? Personally, I wouldn't mind too much about this, and neither would my partner. But I decided to put it here because I know some of my friends care about this, and they didn't want to name their girl after someone they know very closely.
Our criterion score looked like this:
What do the initials read?
At first, my partner and I wondered if it even mattered. But it does, and oh my, I cannot stress this enough: If you’ve ever had a corporate email address, you might know why initials should read right. Write out the initials for the name you’re picking, along with any middle name and last name, and consider how the initials spell out. You want to make sure that your girl’s initials don’t read something odd or ridiculous in English or your native language.
I had a colleague whose name was Arun Soundararajan Selvakumar, but his corporate login email read ass2003@companyname.com. I hope you get it 😅
Our criterion score looked like this:
Does it have an alternate meaning?
Since most South Indians are polyglots and have friends and family who come from various multilingual backgrounds, it was important to us that our boy's name didn't mean anything odd in any other language we were familiar with. We are pretty sure you don't want any odd names for your girl, either.
While at uni, I had a housemate who mentioned his struggles as an Uber driver. He said his rides were cancelled because of his name and its alternate meaning in English. He had to use a different name for his gig works. His name was Hardik.
Our criterion score looked like this:
Do nicknames match?
Matching a nickname with your girl's official name didn't matter to us much, but we're including this criterion here because it might be important to you when choosing your girl's name. In our case, we'd already decided on a nickname when we discovered we were pregnant. But we've met some expecting parents who were very particular about finding a matching nickname-official name combination.
Our criterion score looked like this:
Easy to pronounce?
Have you ever pre-booked a meal for your parents and watched the air hostesses struggle and butcher your parents' lengthy traditional names? I know; it's humiliating. This was super important for us, and we want to save your girl from such avoidable humiliations.
Our criterion score looked like this:
Unique or Popular?
Sometimes, parents choose unique names, and sometimes, they choose names from the list of most popular baby names, as determined by the Social Security Administration. It’s their personal preference. There is no right or wrong way here. Discuss your preference with your partner and note it down.
Our criterion looked like this:
Think about siblings
We're including this criterion here because it might be important to you. In our case, we didn't have this criterion as this was our first child.
Our criterion score looked like this:
Your Compiled Perfect Search Criteria
The next step is to compile your scores and preferences above, sort them on your and your partner's scores in descending order, and create a table similar to ours shown below. Here is our compiled search criterion, and you may also have something similar to ours or something extremely different. Remember, there is no right or wrong here, and I would strongly recommend "against" getting external opinions from your friends and family at this stage, as too many chefs can spoil the broth.
Researching Baby Girl Names
Once you’ve figured out your perfect search criteria in the above step, the next step is a breeze. There are plenty of websites online that have South Indian baby girl name suggestions, including lists of popular Indian baby girl names for 2023. Now researching and shortlisting them is easy since you know what you are looking for.
💡 Popular names can be found in the top-ranked search results for the search "south indian baby girl names"
💡 Popular names starting with a particular alphabet can also be found in the top-ranked search results for the searches like "south indian baby girl names starting with a"
If you're looking for something unique, easy to pronounce, and not so popular yet modern ones, you'll have to dig deeper. And boy, oh boy, its not easy. So we've curated some unique names alphabetically for you. These are very rare and unique, and never used much names.
Just to give you a taste, here is a sample:
Aaravi - Meaning: Peaceful. Reason: Easy to pronounce, sounds South Indian, and is unique.
Yashika - Meaning: Success, Fame. Reason: Easy to pronounce, sounds South Indian, has an alternate meaning, and is unique.
Sampriti - Meaning: Attachment, Love. Reason: Easy to pronounce, sounds South Indian, has an alternate meaning, and is unique.
Vaanya - Meaning: Gracious gift of God. Reason: Easy to pronounce, sounds South Indian, has an alternate meaning, and is unique.
Sahana - Meaning: Patience. Reason: Easy to pronounce, sounds South Indian, has an alternate meaning, and is unique.
Tanvika - Meaning: Beautiful. Reason: Easy to pronounce, sounds South Indian, has an alternate meaning, and is unique.
Mahira - Meaning: Expert, Talented. Reason: Easy to pronounce, sounds South Indian, has an alternate meaning, and is unique.
Iniya - Meaning: Sweet. Reason: Easy to pronounce, sounds South Indian, has an alternate meaning, and is unique.
Mishika - Meaning: Gift of love. Reason: Easy to pronounce, sounds South Indian, has an alternate meaning, and is unique.
Hridhya - Meaning: Of the heart. Reason: Easy to pronounce, sounds South Indian, has an alternate meaning, and is unique.
For those seeking unique boy names, there are also a variety of naming options available. These names are both popular and distinctive, allowing you to stay updated on the latest naming trends. Here are a few sample ones from our collection of rare South Indian names:
Collection of Rare Unique South Indian Names starting with 'A'
South Indian Unique Names - A.pdf
Collection of Rare Unique South Indian Names starting with 'E'
South Indian Unique Names - E.pdf
Collection of Rare Unique South Indian Names starting with 'I'
South Indian Unique Names - I.pdf
Want unique names for all alphabets?
Download the complete collection for all alphabets of curated unique and rare South Indian names, never to be found anywhere on the internet, in our appendix section.
Can AI help me find my baby girl's name?
ChatGPT is a language model trained on the entire data available on the internet, so there is no page on google that it has not seen. Us being humans, there are limitations to doing research, we cannot sit and gouge through all the listings on google search results. But an AI can.
My wife and I used ChatGPT a lot for our research. It is an absolute game changer and can make your research a lot more targeted and laser focussed, rather than having to sift through a lot of garbage content out there on the internet. I would highly recommend signing up for an OpenAI account and start using ChatGPT, I think GPT 3.5 is still free to use.
I have come up with a ChatGPT prompt that uses your perfected search criteria prepared earlier and you can get targeted name suggestions based on your search criteria instantly. Check the appendix for the ChatGPT prompt, do not miss it!
Shortlisting and Finalising
Once you’ve done your research, you can now begin shortlisting. I always suggest you to keep your shortlist small, something around 10 names. This will make your decision-making process a lot faster and smoother. Also, this is the stage where you can bring in your friends and family for inputs and suggestions.
After getting all the inputs and suggestions from everyone, it’s finally time for you and your partner to pick a name for your sweet baby girl. You want a name that is unique, beautiful, pretty, sweet, or cute to match your new daughter's personality. Now it is completely normal to have afterthoughts and want to review your decision again. I’ve been there and done that. So if you feel like it, go back to the shortlist and re-decide if you need to. And once you’ve decided the name, it's time to announce it!
If you’ve reached here, as a sign of goodwill, we would like you to have our custom-designed printable shortlist and share template for our free and paid members for free. You can find it in the appendix section if you’re a member.
I wish you the best of luck in your fatherhood! Thank you for reading. Have a good one.
Appendix
This appendix post contains a gold mine of links and prompts and other resources for finding the perfect South Indian name for your baby girl. The Social Security Administration releases the most popular baby names from the previous year, providing historical data that can help you compare name popularity between different years. And I want you to find the perfect name for your child, because you’re gonna be the best dad for your girl! A lot of effort has been put into building and curating these resources for you, and as a dad, I want you to have it free of charge. The only thing I ask in return for accessing the appendix post is to support me and my blog by becoming a free member.
If you’re not seeing the appendix post below, it means you’re not a member yet. Become a member for free to access the appendix post gold mine 💎.