Spiritual Baby Names and Meanings

Some parents, including rapper Ludacris, are literally bestowing good karma on their children; it could just join the new spiritual name congregation.

Loyal is one of the few virtue names suitable for boys, an honorable and principled Boy Scout-esque appellation with a surprisingly long and distinguished history.

Bardo has a poetic beginning and upbeat ending, with roots in several diverse cultures. It may be most familiar today via George Saunders' novel Lincoln in the Bardo, which refers to the Tibetan Buddhist state of suspension between one life and the next, resembling the Christian idea of Limbo. Bardo is also an ancient saint's name: Saint Bardo was the eleventh century bishop of Mainz, in Germany. Actress Sandra Bullock chose Bardo as her son's middle.

Pema is related to the more familiar Hindu name Padma and means lotus flower. This delightful name was given to only 14 girls in the USA last year, so it's guaranteed to be a unique choice. Pema is probably most familiar to Westerners through Buddhist nun Pema Chodron and through Jetsun Pema, the Dalai Lama's sister.

Infinity is a name that could have a long, bright future ahead of it, with its bold meaning and fashionable sound. It's an awful lot of name to pull off, but if Destiny can do it...

A psychic mystique clings to this name of cards used in fortune-telling.

Ohm, chosen by actress Hilary Swank for her son, twin of sister Aya, is a unit of electrical resistance named for 19th-century physicist Georg Ohm.

Well, parents are naming their children Eden and Heaven...so why not?

Pastor might be a brother for Parson and Deacon.

The old word name Temple has gained some recent notice as a girls' name via admired autistic writer and inventor Dr. Temple Grandin (born Mary Temple), subject of an acclaimed biopic, in which she was played by Claire Danes.

Could be a sister to Trinity, Genesis, or Heaven.

This name boomed in the 1940s and 50s thanks to the glamorous singer Risë (pronounced REE-sa) Stevens, who inherited her name from her Norwegian grandmother. It's rare nowadays, but when used it's more likely to be the uplifting vocabulary word, rhyming with "eyes". The latter was chosen by Nick Cannon and Brittany Bell for their son, born in September 2022.

Peace may be an admirable sentiment to convey in a child's name, but the translated and thus more subtle versions, like Pax or Placido, might work better as first names.

Divine seems more proper a name with the rise of Heaven and its turned-around twin Nevaeh. Though superlative names like Divine -- Unique, say, or Precious -- sometimes seems as if they're trying to hard and protesting too much.

Pretty sound, provocative meaning, but a little over-the-top.

There's only one. Okay, two.

The name Parson might have seemed ridiculous even a few years ago, but when Reese Witherspoon and Ryan Phillippe named their son Deacon, they opened up a whole new field of ecclesiastical cool. Bishop, Priest, and Pastor are other possibilities.

Mount Sinai is a place sacred to the Jewish, Christian, and Islamic religions, the mountain on which Moses received the Ten Commandments. Sinai is also the name of the peninsula where Mount Sinai is located.

Spiritual word names are becoming more and more popular – think Peace, Bodhi, Zen and Psalm – and Spirit is among the rarer options, given to a couple dozen baby girls each year in the US. It's the name of the horse in the kids' TV show Spirit.

A contemporary sounding word name with an ancient history, widely used in the Roman Empire, and based on the mythic goddess of good luck and fertility.