ArmenianIranian root2 syllables
Meaning: traditionally traced to Old Iranian tigra, “pointed, arrow-like”.
Tigran
| Origin | Armenian, from an Old Iranian name; Greek and Latin sources write it Tigranes |
|---|---|
| Meaning | Usually traced to Old Iranian tigra-, “pointed, sharp”, the root behind words for arrow and, most likely, behind the river name Tigris. The popular gloss “tiger” is folk etymology |
| Pronunciation | tee-GRAHN, stress at the end; the Western Armenian form is Dikran |
| Popularity | Outside the current U.S. top 100. A first-rank name in Armenia and immediately readable anywhere in the diaspora |
| Variants | Dikran (Western Armenian), Tigranes (Greek and Latin), Tigrane (the form used in French and Italian opera) |
| Nicknames | Rarely clipped; Western Armenian families use Dikran as the everyday form instead |
| Namesake city | Tigranakert, the capital Tigranes the Great founded in the 70s BC and lost to a Roman army within a decade |
History & meaning
Tigranes II, who reigned from 95 to 55 BC, inherited a middling kingdom and spent thirty years making it the largest power between Rome and Parthia. He absorbed Sophene, took Syria and Phoenicia off the collapsing Seleucids, adopted the Persian title King of Kings, and built himself a new capital. It did not hold: Lucullus destroyed Tigranakert in 69 BC, and by 66 Tigranes had knelt to Pompey and kept Armenia proper as a Roman client. The map of those thirty years is printed in every Armenian school textbook, which is why the name never went out of use.
The name is older than that king. An earlier Tigranes appears as an Orontid prince in Xenophon's Cyropaedia, and the word itself is Iranian rather than Armenian — one of a large borrowed layer that also gave Armenian Artashes, Arshak and Vahagn during centuries under Persian influence. Its root means pointed. An arrow's name, in other words, not a big cat's, whatever the greeting cards say.
Why parents choose it
In Armenia the name does roughly what Alexander does in Greece: it attaches a child to a specific, glorious, thoroughly documented stretch of national history without sounding archaic. It also has the rare advantage of a modern bearer at the top of a world sport, which keeps it current rather than commemorative.
Middle names for Tigran
Two firm syllables leave room for something longer or softer behind them: Tigran Levon, Tigran Alexander, Tigran Sargis, Tigran Emil. The middle names guide covers how to test a pairing out loud.
Famous Tigrans
Tigran Petrosian held the world chess championship from 1963 to 1969 and was called Iron Tigran for a defence nobody could crack. Tigran Mansurian is Armenia's leading living composer of concert music, and the pianist Tigran Hamasyan has spent two decades folding Armenian folk modes into jazz.
Consider instead
Artashes founded the dynasty Tigran perfected, and is the heavier, slower name of the two. Arshak belongs to the line that followed. Ashot jumps forward nine centuries to the kings who restored the crown and built Ani.