Boy names that mean thunder
One word dominates this page: Old Norse þórr, which is not a title or an epithet but the noun for thunder. Scandinavians bolted it onto everything, and six of the names below are that compound. The rest are thunder and lightning in Finnish, Chinese, Armenian and Tagalog.
- ThorTHORNorse
Thunder — literally the noun, not a poetic gloss on it. The god was named after the sound, not the other way round.
- TorstenTOR-stenNorse
Thor's stone: þórr + steinn. Still ordinary in Sweden and Germany.
- ThorbjornTOR-byurnNorse
Thor's bear — the thunder god joined to the largest animal the north had.
- TorgnyTORG-neeNorse
Thor's din, from gnýr, noise or tumult. The most literally thunderous name in Scandinavia.
- TerjeTAIR-yehNorwegian
Thor's spear: Þórr + geirr. Common enough in Norway to pass without comment.
- TroelsTROHLSDanish
Thor plus gísl. Two Old Norse words share that shape — an arrow-shaft and a hostage — and which is at work has never been settled. The Thor half is not in doubt.
- UkkoOOK-koFinnish
The Finnish thunder god. His name became ukkonen, the everyday Finnish word for thunder, and also just means old man.
- LeiLAYChinese
雷 — thunder. The written character is rain over a field, which is roughly what a Chinese thunderstorm looks like.
- ShantSHAHNTArmenian
Lightning, a bolt or flash — still the everyday Armenian word. It became a name through the dramatist Levon Shant, who took it as a pen name.
- Vahagnvah-HAHKNArmenian
The pre-Christian Armenian god of fire and thunder, born out of a reed in the old hymn. The name itself is Iranian for the smiting of resistance.
- KidlatKEED-lahtTagalog
Lightning — the Tagalog noun, used unchanged. Filmmaker Kidlat Tahimik took it as a working name.
- TorinTOR-inUncertain origin
The usual gloss, chief, is unsupported. Old Norse Þór is one of the two better-attested elements behind it, Gaelic torr, a hill, being the other.
One Norse noun, and everyone else
The þórr compounds. Thor on its own is the word for thunder; Torsten, Thorbjorn, Terje, Troels and Torgny each fasten it to a second element — stone, bear, spear, arrow, noise. Torgny is the pick if you want the meaning undiluted, since gnýr is itself the din of a storm. Torin sits at the edge of the family and is flagged accordingly.
Thunder elsewhere. Ukko is the only other name here whose deity became the ordinary word for the weather. Lei is the flat Chinese noun; Kidlat and Shant name the lightning rather than the sound; Vahagn is a thunder god whose own name means something else, which the entry says out loud.
What is not here. Names are left off this page for sounding like weather rather than meaning it — Odin, whose name is óðr, fury; Illia, the Ukrainian Elijah who inherited the old thunder god's summer storms without inheriting his vocabulary. For the whole system rather than the noise, see storm; for the Norse name stock generally, Norse names.