Becoming a dad is a major and massive milestone in your life, so first, kudos to you and your partner! 🎉
Believe me when I say that your responsibilities have already started. You will have to take on and fulfil many responsibilities even before you get to hold your boy in your hand. One challenging yet fruitful responsibility is finding a name for your boy. But since I have been there and done that, I am here to help you and guide you to find the perfect name for your child.
What will you gain from this blog?
- You will learn how to create the perfect search criteria for your boy’s name.
- You will learn about where to research South Indian names online and how to efficiently search for them using the search criteria you have created in the previous step.
- Using our free, professionally designed printables, you will learn how to shortlist names from your research effectively. You can use them with your partner and share them with your friends and family for suggestions.
- Bonus: Our Free and paid community members will also have access to our meticulously curated, ready-to-name, tried-and-tested South Indian Boy Names shortlist that we used here.
Our Namefinding Journey
My son was born last year, in 2023, and I remember my wife and I spending days ideating, researching, shortlisting and finding the right name for our boy. I know how much time we spent, so I want to save you the struggle and time by helping you find the perfect name for your boy.
I remember that when we first started researching, we were overwhelmed by the number of blogs and websites offering 100 or 200 name ideas for our boy. Oh boy, researching through 200 names is not easy, especially when only a handful of them are barely good.
We, being South Indians at heart, wanted a name that would sound “Southy”, if that is even a word, and yet easy to pronounce for Aussies, as our son will be raised here. So, instead of jumping right into looking at names, we decided to agree on a perfect search criteria.
The Perfect Search Criteria
There are no perfect search criteria, but we can come close. The idea is that you and your partner need to agree on certain aspects of the name before even starting to look at names and name ideas and come up with a checklist.
Does it sound “Southy” enough?
Does the name sound “Southy” or “South Indian” enough to your liking? This is a personal preference, but sometimes an important one. Discuss with your partner on each other’s preference for this search criterion and come up with an importance score from 5 to 1 — A score of 5 means it’s super important to you, and a score of 1 means it’s least important to you.
Our criterion score looked like this:
Does it ring a bell?
The next criterion is exactly what the title says: is this name familiar? Do your or your partner’s friends or immediate family have the same name? Personally, I wouldn’t mind too much about this, and neither would my partner. But I decided to put it here because I know some of my friends care about this, and they didn’t want to name their boy after someone they know very closely.
Our criterion score looked like this:
What do the initials read?
At first, my partner and I wondered if it even mattered. But it does, and oh my, I cannot stress this enough: If you’ve ever had a corporate email address, you might know why initials should read right. Write out the initials for the name you’re picking, along with any middle name and last name. You want to make sure that your boy’s initials don’t read something odd or ridiculous in English or your native language.
I had a colleague whose name was Arun Soundararajan Selvakumar, but his corporate login email read ass2003@companyname.com. I hope you get it 😅
Our criterion score looked like this:
Does it have an alternate meaning?
Since most South Indians are polyglots and have friends and family who come from various multilingual backgrounds, it was important to us that our boy’s name didn’t mean anything odd in any other language we were familiar with.
While at uni, I had a housemate who mentioned his struggles as an Uber driver. He said his rides were cancelled because of his name and its alternate meaning in English. He had to use a different name for his gig works. His name was Hardik.
Our criterion score looked like this:
Do nicknames match?
Matching a nickname with our boy’s official name didn’t matter to us that much, but we’re including this criterion here because it might be important to you. In our case, we’d already decided on a nickname when we discovered we were pregnant. But we’ve met some expecting parents who were very particular about finding a matching nickname-official name combination.
Our criterion score looked like this:
Easy to pronounce?
Have you ever pre-booked a meal for your parents and watched the air hostesses struggle and butcher your parents’ lengthy traditional names? I know; it’s humiliating. This was super important for us, and we wanted to save our son from such avoidable humiliations.
Our criterion score looked like this:
Unique or Popular?
Sometimes, parents choose unique names, and sometimes, they choose popular names. It’s their personal preference. There is no right or wrong way here. Discuss your preference with your partner and note it down.
Our criterion looked like this:
Think about siblings
We’re including this criterion here because it might be important to you. In our case, we didn’t have this criterion as this was our first child.
Our criterion looked like this:
Your Compiled Perfect Search Criteria
The next step is to compile your scores and preferences above, sort them on your and your partner’s scores in descending order, and create a table similar to ours shown below. Here is our compiled search criterion, and you may also have something similar to ours or something extremely different. Remember, there is no right or wrong here, and I would strongly recommend “against” getting external opinions from your friends and family at this stage, as too many chefs can spoil the broth.
Researching Baby Boy Names
Once you’ve figured out your perfect search criteria in the above step, the next step is a breeze. There are plenty of websites online that have South Indian baby boy name suggestions, but now researching and shortlisting them is easy since you know what you are looking for.
Popular names can be found in the top-ranked search results for the search “south indian baby boy names”
Popular names starting with a particular alphabet can also be found in the top-ranked search results for the searches like “south indian baby boy names starting with a”
If you’re looking for something unique, easy to pronounce, and not so popular yet modern ones, you’ll have to dig deeper. And boy, oh boy, its not easy. So we’ve curated some unique names alphabetically for you. These are very rare and unique, and never used much names.
Just to give you a taste, here is a sample:
- Arivin — Derived from “Arivu” meaning wisdom — A modern twist to traditional names, focusing on the value of knowledge and learning.
- Nirvith — Imagined from “Nir” (without) and “Vith” (fear) — Suggesting fearlessness and courage, blending modern with traditional sentiments.
- Jeevith — Inspired by “Jeevi” meaning life — Emphasizes the joy and essence of life, easy to pronounce with a positive vibe.
- Pravik — Combination of Praveen (skilled) and Vik (bravery) — Signifies skill and bravery, a name with a strong and modern feel.
- Suvan — Inspired by “Su” meaning good or divine and “Van” referring to forest — Reflects nature and goodness, an easy to pronounce name with a South Indian touch.
- Vihaanish — Blending “Vihaan” (dawn) with a South Indian suffix — Suggests the start of something new and beautiful, unique and modern.
- Tanir — Inspired by “Tani” (self) and “Ir” (powerful) — Signifies independence and strength, a short and impactful name.
- Rithan — Derived from “Ritham” meaning truth in Tamil — A modern twist to convey authenticity and tradition.
- Keshiv — A blend of “Kesh” from Kesavan and “Shiv” from Shiva — Integrating traditional deity names for a unique modern name.
- Yuvik — Inspired by “Yuva” (youth) and adding a modern twist — Signifies youthfulness and vibrancy, a unique and modern name.
Download the complete collection for all alphabets of curated unique and rare South Indian names, never to be found anywhere on the internet.
Can AI help me find my baby boy’s name?
ChatGPT is a language model trained on the entire data available on the internet, so there is no page on google that it has not seen. Us being humans, there are limitations to doing research, we cannot sit and gouge through all the listings on google search results. But an AI can.
My wife and I used ChatGPT a lot for our research. It is an absolute game changer and can make your research a lot more targeted and laser focussed, rather than having to sift through a lot of garbage content out there on the internet. I would highly recommend signing up for an OpenAI account and start using ChatGPT, I think GPT 3.5 is still free to use.
I have come up with a ChatGPT prompt that uses your perfected search criteria prepared earlier and you can get targeted name suggestions based on your search criteria instantly. Download the free ChatGPT prompt, do not miss it!
Shortlisting and Finalising
Once you’ve done your research, you can now begin shortlisting. I always suggest you to keep your shortlist small, something around 10 names. This will make your decision making process a lot faster and smoother. Also this is the stage where you can bring in your friends and family for inputs and suggestions.
After getting all the inputs and suggestions from everyone, it’s finally time for you and your partner to pick a name for your boy. Now it is completely normal to have after thoughts, and wanting to review your decision again. I’ve been there and done that. So if you feel like it, go back to the shortlist and re-decide if you need to. And once you’ve decided the name, its time to announce it!
If you’ve reached here, as a sign of goodwill, we would like you to have our custom designed printable shortlist and share template for free. You can find it here.
I wish you the best of luck in your fatherhood! Thank you for reading. Have a good one.
Thank you for reading and happy parenting!
Sanjay.
