Armenian boy names

Armenian names are unusually loaded with history, and it would be dishonest to present them any other way. Roughly half the traditional stock comes from the church — saints, catholicoi, the scriptures translated in 405 — and most of the rest from a pre-Christian aristocracy whose vocabulary was Iranian. A country of three million holds both layers in ordinary use, and a name here usually tells you which side it came down.

Armenian names in the United States

No Armenian name appears in the SSA's 2025 top 100, so nothing on this page carries a number. What these five have is portability: American communities in Glendale, Fresno and Watertown have used them for a century without anyone having to spell them twice.

AraAH-rahArmenian
Ara the Beautiful, the king an Assyrian queen invaded to obtain and killed by accident. Three letters, two open syllables, and no settled etymology at all.
Aramah-RAHMArmenian
An early patriarch in the traditional king list, offered as one explanation for what the neighbours called the country. A separate Hebrew Aram means highland.
Armenar-MENArmenian
Armenian. The outside name for the people, given back as a personal name — Armina appears in Darius I's Behistun inscription around 520 BC.
Levonleh-VONArmenian
Lion, from Greek Leon. Five kings of Cilician Armenia carried it, and independent Armenia's first president after 1991 was another.
Vahanvah-HAHNArmenian
A shield — the plain Armenian noun. Vahan Mamikonian won at the negotiating table in 484 what his uncle had failed to win in battle.

Traditional names: church and scripture

Armenia adopted Christianity as its state religion in 301, and the naming stock has looked like this ever since. Several of these are Greek or Hebrew words that arrived through the Bible translation of the early fifth century and have been Armenian for sixteen hundred years.

Grigorgree-GORArmenian
Watchful, from Greek gregorein. Gregory the Illuminator converted King Trdat III and founded the cathedral at Echmiadzin, still the seat of the Armenian Apostolic Church.
Nareknah-REKArmenian
A monastery on Lake Van, and one of the few boys' names that is a building. Grigor Narekatsi wrote the Book of Lamentations inside it around the year 1000.
Vardanvar-DAHNArmenian
Rose — vard, borrowed from Iranian in antiquity. Vardan Mamikonian died at Avarayr in 451 defending Armenian Christianity, and the day is still marked.
Sargissar-GEESArmenian
The Roman family name Sergius, meaning unrecoverable. St Sargis has his own feast, on the eve of which the unmarried eat a salty biscuit and watch their dreams for whoever brings water.
Hovhanneshov-hah-NESSArmenian
God is gracious — John, by way of Greek Ioannes and an Armenian letter that shifted from y to h. Diaspora records write it Ohannes.
Hovsephov-SEPArmenian
Joseph; may God add another. One of the most productive Armenian names, which is why Hovsepyan fills the phone book.
Movsesmov-SESSArmenian
Moses, from the Greek of the Septuagint. In Armenian the name belongs less to the prophet than to Movses Khorenatsi, who wrote the nation's origin story.
Davitdah-VEETArmenian
Traditionally glossed beloved. Two Davits: the psalmist, and David of Sassoun, the giant of the oral epic whose bronze stands outside Yerevan station.
Samvelsahm-VELArmenian
God has heard. Samvel and Samuel are one name spelled by two committees — the republic uses the reformed orthography, the diaspora the classical.
Gevorggeh-VORKArmenian
Farmer, from Greek Georgios. St George is venerated far more intensely in the Armenian church than most Western Christians expect; the diaspora says Kevork.

Kings, gods and the pre-Christian layer

The older half, and mostly Iranian in origin — Armenia spent centuries inside the Persian world, and its aristocratic vocabulary came with it. These are not archaisms. They are given to children in Yerevan now, and were given especially heavily in the years around independence in 1991.

HaykHIKEArmenian
The founding forefather, who killed the tyrant of Babylon with one arrow. Armenians call themselves hay and their country Hayastan, so the given name and the nation are the same word.
Tigrantee-GRAHNArmenian
From Old Iranian tigra, pointed — an arrow's name, whatever the greeting cards say. Tigranes II ran the largest state between Rome and Parthia in the 70s BC.
Arshakar-SHAHKArmenian
The Armenian form of Arsaces, founder of the Parthian royal house. His descendants, the Arshakuni, were on the Armenian throne at the conversion in 301.
Artashesar-tah-SHESSArmenian
Whose reign is through truth — arta, the Zoroastrian word for right order. He declared himself king in 189 BC and marked his borders with inscribed stone pillars.
Ashotah-SHOTArmenian
A royal Bagratid name of probably Iranian origin whose meaning nobody has recovered. Ashot I was crowned in 885, restoring an Armenian kingdom after four and a half centuries.
Surensoo-RENArmenian
Heroic, strong — and the name of a Parthian noble house whose commander destroyed seven Roman legions at Carrhae in 53 BC.
Vahagnvah-HAHKNArmenian
The pre-Christian god of fire and thunder, from Iranian Verethragna. The song of his birth — a reed, smoke, a red-haired youth with eyes like suns — is the oldest surviving Armenian verse.
Mherm-HEHRArmenian
The god Mithra: sun, light and sworn covenant. Two Mhers run through Daredevils of Sassoun, the younger riding into a rock to wait for a world just enough to hold him.
Vahevah-HEHArmenian
The last king of the legendary Haykazuni line, killed fighting Alexander. Its etymology is genuinely open, and it is a separate word from both Vahagn and Vahan.
Khorenkho-RENArmenian
Either a district name reused or an Iranian word for sun; Armenian dictionaries print both and commit to neither. The name reads clerical — two catholicoi have borne it.

Names from the dictionary

The small counterweight to all that history: four Armenian words used as names, three of them built on fire or the eye. Two arrived as the pen names of writers and were adopted by families afterwards.

Hranth-RAHNTArmenian
Fiery, by the usual reading, from hur. Political since 2007, when the journalist Hrant Dink was shot outside his Istanbul newspaper and tens of thousands walked at his funeral.
Hrachh-RAHCHArmenian
Fiery-eyed — hur plus ach, eye. Hrachya Acharyan compiled the dictionaries of Armenian etymology and personal names that anyone checking a name like this ends up consulting.
ShantSHAHNTArmenian
Lightning; a thunderbolt. It became a given name through the playwright Levon Shant, and it is now also one of Armenia's largest television channels.
Sevakseh-VAHKArmenian
Dark-eyed — sev, black, in the same construction as Hrach. Taken up after the poet Paruyr Sevak, who died in 1971 at forty-seven.

How Armenian naming works

Two dates carry almost everything. In 301 Armenia adopted Christianity as the religion of the state, by tradition the first country anywhere to do so, and the church names begin there. Around 405 Mesrop Mashtots devised an alphabet for a language that had none, and the first thing put into it was scripture — a translation so good that Armenians call it the Queen of Translations. Davit, Hovhannes, Movses and Hovsep all reach modern Armenian through that text rather than through Latin or any European intermediary, which is why they look so unlike their English cousins while being exactly the same names. The other half of the stock is older and came from the east: Tigran, Arshak, Artashes and Vahagn are Iranian words absorbed during the long centuries when Armenia sat inside the Persian world. A pagan god's name on a birth certificate in a country Christian for seventeen centuries is not a contradiction; modern bearers wear Vahagn as national poetry.

Two practical points for anyone comparing documents. Armenian split into two standard forms, and the classical consonants came out voiced in the east and voiceless in the west, so the same man is Grigor in Yerevan and Krikor in Beirut, Gevorg or Kevork, Sargis or Sarkis, Vardan or Vartan. Soviet Armenia then reformed the orthography in the 1920s and again in 1940, which the diaspora never adopted — hence Samvel on a Yerevan passport and Samuel on a Lebanese one, for one name. Surnames settle the rest: Armenian family names are patronymics with -yan or -ian welded on, so the common given names of the fifth century are still legible in the twenty-first as Grigoryan, Hovhannisyan, Sargsyan and Davtyan. For the tradition that supplied the older layer, see Persian names, or browse the full set of names by origin.