Boy names that mean moon
This list is short on purpose. Across the world's naming stock the moon is overwhelmingly a girls' idea — Luna, Selene, Mahtab, Ayşe — and the boys' names that genuinely carry it come from a handful of traditions. Six do. Padding the list with names that merely sound lunar would not help anyone.
- AhmoseAH-mohsEgyptian
Born of Iah — Iah is the moon and the moon god — plus mes, to be born. The king who founded the Eighteenth Dynasty.
- Berkaybehr-KYTurkish
Firm moon: berk (solid, firm) + ay (moon). A modern Turkish coinage.
- Koraykoh-RYTurkish
Ember moon: kor, a live coal, + ay. A moon sitting low and coloured like a fire.
- Kōnanekoh-NAH-nehHawaiian
Bright as moonlight — the adjective for a night the moon has lit clear enough to see by.
- HōkūHOH-kooHawaiian
Star; and in the traditional Hawaiian lunar month, Hōkū is the night of the full moon.
- ThutmoseTHOOT-mohsEgyptian
Born of Thoth — the ibis-headed god of writing, reckoning and the moon.
Where the moon actually shows up in boys' names
Turkish is the richest source. Ay is the ordinary modern Turkish word for the moon, and it compounds freely: Berkay is a firm moon, Koray an ember-coloured one. These are twentieth-century coinages, built the way Turkish builds words, and they read in Turkey as unremarkable rather than poetic. The same element sits inside a long list of Turkish girls' names, which is part of why the boys' side stays small.
Egypt names the god, not the disc. Ahmose and Thutmose are both “born of” names, and both were born of a lunar deity: Iah, who is the moon plainly, and Thoth, who governs writing, arithmetic and the calendar because he governs the month. Ahmose I drove the Hyksos out of Egypt and founded the dynasty that produced Hatshepsut and Tutankhamun, so the name carries a great deal more than its etymology.
Hawaiian describes the light instead. Kōnane is not the moon but what the moon does — bright, as moonlight, said of a night clear enough to walk by. Hōkū means star, and earns a place here because in the Hawaiian lunar calendar Hōkū is the name of the full-moon night itself. If none of the six lands, the nearest neighbours are night, star and light, and the Japanese, Chinese and Vietnamese name Akira, Ming and Minh all write the moon 月 into their character 明 without meaning it.