Bahram

History & meaning

Bahram is a religious name before it is anything else, and the page should say so plainly. Avestan Verethragna is built from verethra, resistance or obstacle, and the root meaning to strike: the smiting of what stands in the way, hence victory. Verethragna is a yazata, one of the beings worthy of worship in Zoroastrianism, and the fourteenth Yasht is addressed to him. In it he appears to Zoroaster in ten forms in turn, among them a wind, a bull with golden horns, a white horse, a rutting camel, a boar, a youth of fifteen, a raven, a ram and an armed warrior. The same ancient formation lies behind the Vedic epithet Vrtrahan, and behind the Armenian divinity Vahagn, whose name and this one are two outcomes of the same original word.

Middle Persian turned Verethragna into Warahran and then Wahram, and the name went in two directions. It became the highest grade of Zoroastrian temple fire, the Atash Bahram or victorious fire, consecrated from sixteen separate sources of flame; only a handful exist, the best known being the Iranshah at Udvada in Gujarat. And it became a royal name: six Sasanian kings were called Bahram. Bahram V, remembered as Bahram Gur for his hunting of the wild ass, is the hero of Nezami's Haft Peykar, and Bahram Chobin, a general from the Mihran family, deposed Hormizd IV in 590 and briefly reigned as the only non-Sasanian to hold that throne. Persian astronomy assigned the planet Mars to the same divinity, which is why Iranians still call Mars Bahram.

Why parents choose it

Zoroastrian families choose it for what it is. Others choose it for the sound, which is symmetrical and unhurried, or for the planet. Either way it is worth knowing that the name names a divinity, in the way Apollo does, and that Iranians hear the Sasanian kings in it as clearly as the yazata. It sits apart from the Persian names that come out of the epic's hero roster.

Middle names for Bahram

The two open syllables want a middle with a tighter vowel: Bahram Cyrus, Bahram Nima, Bahram Peter, Bahram Kian. The middle names guide works through the rhythm.

Famous Bahrams

Bahram Beyzai, born in 1938, is Iran's most significant living playwright and the director of Bashu, the Little Stranger; he has taught at Stanford since 2010. Bahram Radan has been one of Iranian cinema's leading men since the early 2000s. Historically, Bahram Gur, the fifth Sasanian king of that name, is the single best-attested bearer.

Consider instead

Soroush is the other name here drawn straight from a Zoroastrian divine being. Ardeshir founded the dynasty the Bahrams ruled. Arash keeps the victory idea in narrative form.