Arundhati
Meaning
name of a revered star and sage's wife in Hindu tradition, associated with steadfastness; famously borne by Arundhati Roy, author of The God of Small Things
The story
Arundhati reaches back into Hindu tradition, where it is the name of a revered star and of a great sage's wife, held up for ages as an emblem of steadfastness and devotion; in some wedding rituals the star is pointed out to newlyweds as a model for the marriage ahead. It is a name with real weight in India and almost no footprint in the West, which changed a little in 1997, when Arundhati Roy published The God of Small Things. The novel, set among the backwaters of Kerala, won the Booker Prize, sold millions of copies worldwide, and made its author one of the most recognizable literary figures alive, as famous later for her essays and activism as for her fiction. In US records Arundhati appears only in the 2020s: a genuinely rare pick, four flowing syllables with a star behind them.
Popularity, 1890–2024
Arundhati does not appear in US Social Security baby-name records, which list only names given to at least five babies in a year. There is no popularity curve to chart: a genuinely rare pick.
The Arundhati deep dive
Whether you’re naming a baby or exploring your own name’s history, this is a personal letter, not a list: where Arundhati truly comes from, how it traveled, and what a century of records reveals. If you have grown a tree on nametree, it also considers how Arundhati fits with your family’s names and surname.
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