Boy names that mean eagle
Only six names on this site actually mean eagle. That is not padding-shy pessimism, it is the record: outside Germanic arn and a handful of names from Mesoamerica and West Africa, cultures that revered birds of prey usually named the falcon instead. So the list runs eagles first, then the falcons and hawks — and every entry says which bird it really is.
- ArneAR-nehOld Norse
Eagle, from ǫrn. Originally the short form of any compound beginning Arn-, and now a name in its own right.
- ArnoldAR-nuldGermanic
Arn (eagle) plus wald (rule, power): eagle rule. The commonest eagle name in English by a wide margin.
- ArvidAHR-vidSwedish
Eagle tree, from ǫrn plus viðr (wood). An eagle and the wood it nests in, in two syllables.
- AriAR-eeOld Norse
Ari is the poetic Old Norse word for the eagle. The identical spelling is Hebrew for lion, so this name genuinely carries two animals.
- Cuauhtémockwow-TEH-mokNahuatl
Descending eagle, from cuāuhtli (eagle) plus temo (to come down). Borne by the last Mexica ruler of Tenochtitlan.
- Ugochukwuoo-goh-CHOO-kwooIgbo
Ugo (eagle, and by extension honour and glory) plus Chukwu (God). The eagle feather is the Igbo mark of achievement.
- Shahinshah-HEENPersian
The royal falcon — specifically the peregrine. Falcon, not eagle, and Persian is precise about it.
- Doğandoh-AHNTurkish
Falcon. The same word is also the participle of doğmak, to rise or be born, so Turkish hears both at once.
- ÁkosAH-kohshHungarian
Traditionally white falcon, from Turkic ak (white) plus a word for a bird of prey. Likely rather than proved.
- CsongorCHON-gorHungarian
Falcon — the big hunting hawk of the steppe, from Turkic sunqur, the bird Persian borrowed as sonqor.
- HayatoHAH-yah-tohJapanese
Falcon person: hayabusa, the peregrine, plus hito, person. Not an eagle, but the same idea about a boy.
- Cauãka-WANBrazilian
Hawk or falcon, from Tupi akauã, the laughing falcon — a bird Portuguese still calls the acauã.
- Kauêka-WEHBrazilian
The same Tupi bird word behind Cauã, in the spelling that took off in Brazil in the 1990s.
Eagles, and the falcons that get called eagles
The Germanic eagle. Arn, from Old Norse ǫrn, is one of the workhorse elements of northern naming, and it gives Arne, Arnold and Arvid directly. Old Norse poetry preferred ari for the same bird, which is where the Norse half of Ari comes from — and why a boy called Ari can be a lion in a Hebrew-speaking family and an eagle in a Scandinavian one. Both are correct.
The eagle outside Europe. Nahuatl cuāuhtli sits at the centre of Mexica symbolism: the eagle on the cactus is the founding sign of Tenochtitlan, and Cuauhtémoc, descending eagle, was the city's last ruler. Igbo ugo does double duty as bird and as honour, because the eagle feather is what an Igbo community awards for achievement — so Ugochukwu reads as God's glory as naturally as it reads as God's eagle.
The falcons. Shahin, Doğan, Ákos, Csongor, Hayato, Cauã and Kauê all mean falcon or hawk, and lists that call them eagle names are simply wrong. They are here because they answer the same wish and because the distinction is worth knowing before you write it on a birth certificate: Persian shāhīn is the peregrine specifically, and Turkish and Hungarian both took their falcon words from the steppe vocabulary of hunting with birds. If you want the strictly correct label, take one of the first six. The meanings index has the other animals.