Armenian Names

Updated November 12, 2024.

Each source has its own transliteration method, so combining names from all the sources into one page would make it impossible to know how to pronounce each name. Therefore, each source has its own page.

The first five pages are names from manuscripts written in Armenian by scribes living in culturally Armenian, often Armenian-ruled, regions. These sources show the development of the native Armenian pool of names over time. The last source, Armenian Men’s Names in Sivas Province, Turkey, is different. It was written in Ottoman Turkish by a Turkish-speaking Muslim scribe who recorded the names of ethnic Armenians in villages in east-central Anatolia, living under Ottoman rule and among Turkish-speaking Muslim neighbors.

• Armenian Names from 1301-1480
• Armenian Names from the Chester Beatty Library
• Armenian Names from Treasures from the Ark
• Armenian Names from the Bodleian
• Armenian Names from the British Museum
• Armenian Men’s Names in Sivas Province, Turkey

Name Patterns

People were overwhelmingly known by a single name. For lay persons and vardapets (religious teachers), it was their birth name; for priests, monks, and nuns, it was the name they were given upon consecration or ordination. The name could be shortened, made into a diminutive, or occasionally replaced by an unrelated nickname. Very occasionally, an epithet could be added to the name, and there are instances of double-barreled names that I haven’t had enough information to analyze; but the general rule was a single name.

A list of donors in a 14th-century Bible gives an example of the range of names borne by ordinary people. In 1332, the vardapet Nersēs vowed to have a copy of the Bible made, and traveled to “the village of Xantkah in the land of Urnu”¹ to raise funds from his family and friends. He succeeded:

Moved by love and through the compassion of the holy Mother of God, they offered me the cost [of the production] of this Holy Bible, each according to his means: Mleh, 210 spitak; his brother Lewon, 90 dram; Yovan, 90 dram; Tʽuran, 30 dram; Damur, 30 dram; my cousin Mxitʽar, 42 dram; the carpenter Mxitʽar, 30 dram; Vardan, 33 dram; Hayrapet, 36 dram; Martir [illegible]; Tʽadkan, 30 dram; the dyer Luser, 30 dram; Zakʽar, 18 dram; Ramanos and his mother, 36 dram; Fṙang Xlat’c’i, 100 dram; Anton, 20 dram; Umek and his sons, 40 dram.

Colophons of Armenian Manuscripts, 1301-1480, p. 11

Fṙang Xlat’c’i is “Frankish Xlat’c’i,” for whatever ethnicity “Frankish” stood for in 14th-century western Anatolia. (Two centuries later, in the same area, the Turkish equivalent meant “European.”) Fṙang Xlat’c’i couldn’t have been all that Frankish, though, with the intensely Armenian name Xlat’c’i.

Bynames

As people moved into the wider world, they were distinguished from one another by the name of their place of origin: Amirdovlatʽ Amasiacʽi, of Amasia; Matʽēos Sebastcʽi, of Sebastias; St. Grigor Narekacʽi, of Narek. Modern scholarly sources both give names as written (Matʽēos Sebastcʽi) and translate them (Matʽēos of Sebastias), so either is a valid way to write an Armenian name in English.

Where Did the Names Come From?

Armenian names were overwhelmingly either Armenian, Persian, Biblical (via Greek), or saintly (also via Greek), with Arabic and Turkish elements entering the name pool in late period with the Islamic conquest of Armenian lands.

The mix of cultural influences varied from region and region, and possibly by social level. For example, the villagers of Xantkah who donated to Nersēs bore mainly Biblical or traditional Armenian names, with the exception of Lewon (Leon), whose name is a European import. On the other hand, a bit to the east and a century later, a tragedy-riven merchant family draws its names from far and wide:

In these bitter times, the loyal, devout and pious lady Pʽašay expressed desire for this … book … in memory of her good soul and … [the soul] of her son J̈anibēk, who became a martyr at the hands of the infidels, which caused inconsolable grief to his parents, and of her husband, Hawkitʽ Atom, who out of grief for his son became xasratʽamah…

…And again remember in your chaste prayers the pious lady Pʽašay, the recipient of this holy Gospel, and her husband Atom, who passed away in God, and her brother, the xoǰa [wealthy merchant] Faruxšah . .. and her other brother Sultanšay, who went on a journey and no one knew what became of him. Also remember in your prayers the pious tanuter [householder] Hawkitʽ Atom, who died in Christ, and his spouse P’ašay, and his son J̈anibēk, whom the infidels slew stealthily at Hizan and made him a martyr and whose body his father could not find, and went to his grave in grief and lamentation . . .

Colophons of Armenian Manuscripts, 1301-1480, p. 219

Pʽašay (Pasha, Turkish or Persian) and her brothers Faruxšah (Persian Farrukhshah, “happy lord”) and Sultanšay (Arabic sultan + Persian shah) bore names with Persian roots and Arabic influences; she and her husband Atom (Adam) named their son J̈anibēk, a name most famously borne by the Turkicized Mongolian lord Jani Beg/Janibek Khan, one of the khans of the Golden Horde.

The Question of Noble Names

Members of noble and princely houses often have names that are rarely or never encountered elsewhere. For example, the Orbelian prince Burtʽel (ruled 1300-1343) was married to a woman named Vaxax (or Vakhakh).² Their son, Inanik, named his daughter Vaxax. This second Vaxax, wife of Arl.utʽay, is best known as a former owner of the Glazdor Gospels. Another Vaxax appears in 1301, when she and her princely husband Azizbe’k (or Aziz-Beg) built a church in Eghvard.³ The name Vaxax was in use in at least two Armenian princely houses in the late 13th to mid-14th centuries, but there are no instances of it outside elite circles.

1. I could not trace this location, but Nersēs says he was born in Sansun (modern-day Sason, well west of Lake Van in western Turkey), so if part of his family lived in Xantkah, presumably it wasn’t far from Sansun.
2. Augé, Isabelle. “Les lieux de mémoire des princes Orbelean : mémoire écrite, mémoire inscrite.” In Mélanges Jean-Pierre Mahé (Travaux et mémoires 18), Paris 2014, p. 65-82.
3. http://tert.nla.am/archive/HAY%20GIRQ/Ardy/1921-1950/arajnordarani_erghandes_1944.pdf
   https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/8fb5/66d091117993b9e8acc91a32b39c529634e6.pdf