184 mermaid names and where they're from

The most famous mermaid in literature has no name. Hans Christian Andersen's 1837 story calls her only the little mermaid, the youngest of six sea princesses. So mermaid names have to come from somewhere else, and the lists that rank on Google rarely say where. Cordelia shows up as "daughter of the sea" (she comes from a 12th-century chronicle of King Leir). Morwenna is said to mean "waves of the sea" (it's Old Cornish for maiden). Melusine gets "sea fog", when nobody knows what her name means. Ula is a "gem of the sea", and it's a Polish short form of Urszula.

So we checked every meaning here against Behind the Name, the original texts or a folklore reference, and the folklore names link to the story they come from. The list sticks to names old enough to belong to everyone, so you won't find film or TV characters on it. Where we made names up ourselves, for the cute names, mermaid last names and the birthday name finder, we say so.

What is a pretty mermaid name?

Here are twelve from across the list, picked for how they sound out loud and how well they hold up as a real name:

• Marina, "of the sea" in Latin
• Lorelei, the singing maiden of the Rhine
• Coral, the stuff of reefs
• Melusine (may-loo-ZEEN), the French water fairy with a serpent's tail
• Galatea, a Greek sea nymph
• Naia, Basque for "wave, sea foam"
• Pearl, the birthstone for June
• Undine, a water spirit named for the Latin word for wave
• Kailani, Hawaiian for sea and sky
• Thalassa, Greek for sea
• Muriel, from the Irish for "bright sea"
• Iara, the lady of the water in Brazilian folklore

Names that really mean mermaid

The English word is plain enough: Middle English mermayde, from mere (sea or lake) and maid. Very few given names carry the idea, so most of these are the word for mermaid in another language, and several already sound like names. Sirena, Sirène, Sereia and Syrena all descend from the Greek Siren, which is how the two creatures got tangled up. The translations come from Wiktionary's table unless another source is linked.

• Muirgen. Irish for "born of the sea", the name a legend gives the mermaid Lí Ban at her baptism. Behind the Name
• Sirena. The word for mermaid in Italian and in Tagalog.
• Sirène. French for mermaid.
• Sereia. Portuguese for mermaid.
• Syrena. Polish for mermaid.
• Undine. Coined by the 16th-century Swiss author Paracelsus for female water spirits, from Latin unda, wave. In Lithuanian, undinė means mermaid. Behind the Name
• Ondine. The other common spelling of Undine.
• Morvoren. Cornish, from mor (sea) and moren (maiden).
• Morforwyn. The Welsh word, also written môr-forwyn.
• Hafmey. Icelandic, from haf (sea) and mey (maiden).
• Merrow. Anglicized from Irish murúch. In the tales T. C. Croker published in 1828, a merrow needs a magical red cap to travel between deep water and dry land.
• Nixie. A water sprite of Germanic folklore. The German Nixe is also a word for mermaid.
• Nara. Latvian for mermaid, written nāra.
• Bat Yam. Hebrew for mermaid, literally "daughter of the sea".
• Deniz Kızı. Turkish, "sea girl". Deniz on its own is a Turkish given name.
• Jalpari. Hindi, from jal (water) and pari (fairy). Pari is on our list of names that mean fairy too.
• Ningyo. Japanese, combining person and fish. In legend, eating its flesh could make you immortal.
• Rusalka. A Slavic water spirit, often translated as mermaid, though the folklorist Natalie Kononenko notes she's pictured with legs rather than a tail.

Mermaids from folklore, by where they swim

Mermaids appear in folklore worldwide, and they aren't all the shimmering kind. Some of these are one named character, and others are a whole class of being whose word works as a name. Mami Wata, Yemoja, Lasirèn and the jengu belong to faiths still practiced today, so they're worth reading about before you borrow one.

Who was the first mermaid?

Atargatis, a goddess of ancient Syria also called Derceto, is said to be the first mermaid in the written record.

• Atargatis. The chief goddess of northern Syria in classical antiquity, said to be the first mermaid in the written record. Diodorus Siculus, writing in the first century BC, gave her "the face of a woman, and otherwise the entire body of a fish."
• Derceto. The Greek name for her. In the second century, the writer Lucian described a statue of Derceto in Phoenicia with a woman's upper body and a fish's tail.

Irish, Scottish, Welsh, Cornish and Manx mermaids

• Lí Ban. A woman who survives the flood that creates Lough Neagh, turns half salmon and roams the sea for 300 years. The Annals of the Four Masters record her capture in the year 558, and her name glosses as "paragon of women."
• Ceasg. A Scottish mermaid with the tail of a young salmon, also called "maid of the wave." Catch one and she must grant three wishes.
• Gwenhidwy. A Welsh mermaid whose flock is the foaming sea. The waves are her ewes and every ninth wave is the ram, and a flock driven toward shore meant a storm was coming.
• Ben-varrey. The mermaids of the Isle of Man, kinder than most. In one story a baby mermaid steals a little girl's doll, and her mother makes her return it with a pearl necklace.
• Selkie. Not exactly a mermaid: the seal people of Scottish stories, who shed their skins to walk on land.
• Zennor. The story never names her, so she goes by her Cornish village. The mermaid who ran off with the chorister Matthew Trewhella was recorded by William Bottrell in 1873, and a 15th-century mermaid is still carved on a bench in the church there.
• Sabrina. A princess drowned in the River Severn in Geoffrey of Monmouth's chronicle, and a water nymph in Milton's Comus (1634). Behind the Name

European river and sea maidens

• Melusine. A water fairy who turns serpent from the waist down every Saturday and leaves her husband when he breaks his promise not to look. Her name's meaning is unknown. She's on our fairy list too. Behind the Name
• Lorelei. A real slate rock on the Rhine. The singing maiden was invented by Clemens Brentano in 1801, and Heinrich Heine's 1824 poem sat her on the cliff combing her golden hair. Most people assume it's an old folk tale. Behind the Name
• Jūratė. A Lithuanian sea goddess, sometimes described as a mermaid, who lives in an amber castle under the Baltic and falls for a fisherman. In some tellings, the amber on the beach is her tears. The name is related to jūra, sea.
• Thessalonike. A real princess, half-sister of Alexander the Great. In modern Greek legend she became a mermaid who stops ships to ask "Is King Alexander alive?" The right answer is "He lives and reigns and conquers the world." The wrong one brings a storm.
• Chernava. The Sea Tsar's daughter, who marries the musician Sadko in the Russian oral epic that carries his name.

African, Caribbean and South American water spirits

• Mami Wata. Water spirits of West, South and Central Africa whose name means "Water as Mother" or "Mother of the Waters". Their stories spread around the world with the slave trade from the 1600s.
• Yemoja. A major water deity of the Yoruba religion, protective and motherly, often depicted as a mermaid by devotees. Spelled Yemayá in Cuba.
• Janaína. One of Yemoja's names in Brazil.
• Jengu. A mermaid-like water spirit of the coastal peoples of Cameroon, said to bring good fortune and cure disease. The plural is miengu.
• Njuzu. Mermaid-like spirits of the Shona people of Zimbabwe.
• Lasirèn. A spirit of Haitian vodou, from the French la sirène, the mermaid. She stands for wealth, beauty and romance.
• Mamadjo. The mermaid of Grenada, one of several in the Caribbean with West African roots.
• Watramama. Her counterpart in Suriname and Guyana.
• Aycayia. A mermaid of the Neo-Taíno nations of the Caribbean, tied to the hibiscus flower of the majagua tree.
• Iara. Also spelled Uiara or Yara, from the Nheengatu words for water and lady. This Amazon river beauty sings to lure men, and Brazil put her on a stamp in 1974.

Asian and Pacific mermaids

• Suvannamaccha. Literally "golden fish", a mermaid princess in the Thai and Southeast Asian versions of the Ramayana. Sent to steal the rocks from Hanuman's causeway, she falls in love with him instead. Thai shops still hang her picture for luck.
• Pania. A sea maiden of Māori tradition who lives on the reef off Napier, New Zealand, where her statue stands on Marine Parade.
• Hwang-ok. A princess from Naranda, an undersea kingdom of mermaids, in a tale told on Dongbaek Island in Busan, South Korea.
• Sinjike. A Korean mermaid of Geomun Island who warned fishermen of storms by singing and throwing rocks into the sea.
• Magindara. The word for mermaids among the Bicolano people of the Philippines, known for beautiful voices and vicious natures.

Sea queens

These three are sea goddesses and queens more than mermaids.

• Sedna. The Inuit goddess of the sea and marine animals, also called Mother of the Sea.
• Nāmaka. The Hawaiian sea goddess, older sister of the volcano goddess Pele. When they fall out, Nāmaka sends tidal waves.
• Nyai Roro Kidul. Queen of the Southern Sea in Javanese and Sundanese mythology.

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Greek sea nymph names

Hesiod's Theogony names fifty daughters of the sea god Nereus, and his translator notes that many of the names describe the sea. These are the Nereids. Ancient gems sometimes show them half maiden and half fish, like mermaids. Six of the sisters now orbit a planet: Neptune's moons include Galatea, Halimede, Sao, Laomedeia, Psamathe and Neso.

• Thetis. The mother of Achilles. Possibly from Greek for "one who places." Behind the Name
• Amphitrite. Wife of Poseidon and mother of Triton. Possibly "the surrounding sea." Behind the Name
• Galatea. Probably from gala, milk. She loved the young Acis, whom a jealous Cyclops crushed with a rock. Behind the Name
• Galene. "Calm", in the translator's gloss.
• Cymothoe. "Wave-swift."
• Cymodoce. Wave-receiver. Hesiod says she calms the waves and the blasts of raging winds.
• Pherusa. "She who speeds", meaning ships.
• Dynamene. "She who has power."
• Psamathe. From the Greek for "sand of the seashore." Behind the Name
• Halimede. From hals (sea, brine) plus a word meaning either to be mindful of or to rule over. Behind the Name
• Sao. The rescuer.
• Eunice. "Good victory." Hesiod calls her rosy-armed. Behind the Name
• Eudora. "Good gift." Behind the Name
• Thalia. From "to blossom", and in the Iliad's list as Thaleia. Behind the Name
• Ione. From the Greek for violet flower. Behind the Name
• Calypso. Probably "she that conceals", the nymph who kept the shipwrecked Odysseus on her island. Behind the Name
• Doris. Their mother. The name means "Dorian woman", not sea. Behind the Name
• Nerine. Virgil's name for a Nereid.
• Neso. Only a name in Hesiod's list, and now a moon.
• Laomedeia. The same, spelled Laomedea in some translations.

Siren names

A siren wasn't a mermaid at first. The Greek Sirens had the bodies of birds, and Homer's Odyssey gives them no names at all. Later writers named them, and later artists gave them fish tails. These suit a darker mermaid, a villain in a story or a costume. We only give meanings for the two we could check. If it's the singing you like, our musical baby names go further.

• Parthenope. "Maiden's voice." When her song failed on Odysseus she drowned herself, and her body washed ashore at what is now Naples. Behind the Name
• Ligeia. From Greek for "clear-voiced, shrill, whistling." Edgar Allan Poe used it for a story in 1838. Behind the Name
• Leucosia. Named with Parthenope and Ligeia by the poet Lycophron.
• Thelxiepeia. Named by Apollodorus.
• Aglaope. Also named by Apollodorus.
• Peisinoe. The third in Apollodorus's trio.
• Molpe. From a fragment of Hesiod's Catalogues.

Norse wave names

Rán, the Norse goddess of the sea, pulls sailors under with a net. She and her husband Ægir had nine daughters who are the waves, and their names are old poetic words for waves. One list swaps Dröfn for Bára, which is why ten names appear here. They're hard to spell and wonderful for a character.

• Rán. Probably "robber."
• Bára. "Breaking wave."
• Bylgja. "The wavy one."
• Dröfn. "Turbulent wave."
• Dúfa. "The sinker one."
• Hefring. "The rising one."
• Himinglæva. "Brilliant sky."
• Hrönn. "The fast one."
• Kólga. "The cold one."
• Uðr. "Foam", also written Unn.
• Blóðughadda. "Bloody hair", which the scholar John Lindow reads as reddish foam on a wave.

Mermaid names for girls

These are real given names that suit a mermaid without coming from a mermaid story. Each meaning is checked against Behind the Name.

Names that mean sea, from Latin, Greek and French

Most of the names people recognize come from Latin mare, the sea.

• Marina. The feminine of Marinus, from a Roman family name or Latin marinus, "of the sea."
• Maris. "Of the sea", from Stella Maris, star of the sea.
• Mar. Spanish and Catalan for sea.
• Marisol. Short for María Soledad, sometimes read as mar y sol, sea and sun.
• Maren. A Danish pet form of Marina or Maria.
• Marnie. Possibly a pet form of Marina.
• Pelagia. From Greek pelagos, the sea.
• Thalassa. Greek for sea, and the personified sea of Greek myth.
• Océane. From French océan.
• Nerissa. Created by Shakespeare for The Merchant of Venice, possibly from Greek for sea sprite.

Celtic names that mean sea

The Irish muir and the Welsh and Cornish mor both mean sea.

• Muirenn. Old Irish muir (sea) and finn (white, blessed).
• Muriel. The English form of Irish Muirgel, "bright sea."
• Meraud. Cornish. The meaning is unknown, perhaps from mor, sea.
• Morgan. Possibly Welsh mor (sea) and cant (circle).
• Morgana. The feminine of Morgan.

Names that mean ocean, sea or wave around the world

• Kai. Hawaiian for sea.
• Kailani. Hawaiian kai (sea) and lani (sky, heaven).
• Kaimana. Hawaiian kai and mana (power). It also means diamond.
• Darya. Persian for sea or ocean.
• Deniz. Turkish for sea.
• Derya. Turkish for sea or ocean, from Persian.
• Meri. Finnish for sea.
• Merike. Estonian meri, sea, with a diminutive ending.
• Mira. From Sanskrit for sea or ocean, and the name of a 16th-century Indian princess.
• Itsaso. Basque for ocean.
• Naia. Basque for "wave, sea foam."
• Nanami. Japanese for seven (nana) and sea (mi), in one of its spellings.
• Tasi. Chamorro for sea or ocean.
• Lwandle. Zulu and Xhosa for ocean.
• Hafdís. Old Norse haf (sea) and dís (goddess).

Pearl, coral and gem names

Most pearl names trace back to Margaret.

• Pearl. The gem. A given name since the 19th century.
• Perla. The Italian and Spanish form.
• Margaret. From Greek margarites, pearl.
• Margot. A French short form of Marguerite.
• Greta. Short for Margareta.
• Rita. Short for Margherita.
• Maisie. A Scottish pet form of Mairead, the Gaelic Margaret.
• Megan. A Welsh pet form of Margaret.
• Mererid. Welsh for pearl, and the well-maiden whose overflowing well drowned a kingdom in the Black Book of Carmarthen.
• Lulu. In Arabic it means pearls, separate from the English pet name.
• Coral. From Greek korallion.
• Coralie. The French form, from Latin coralium or Greek Koralia.
• Aquamarine. The gem, from Latin for seawater, and the birthstone for March.

Cute mermaid names

These are our own picks, small splashy words for a doll, a bath toy or a very young mermaid.

• Bubbles
• Shelly
• Minnow
• Ripple
• Splash
• Cove
• Pebble
• Periwinkle
• Sprat
• Cockle
• Sandy
• Seaglass

Mermaid last names

No folklore gives mermaids surnames, so these fifteen are ours: two-part sea names for a character, a story or a pretend family.

• Moonwave
• Saltwhisper
• Coralbrook
• Wavecrest
• Shellsong
• Silverfin
• Seafoam
• Tidewater
• Bluefin
• Pearlshell
• Driftwood
• Kelpwood
• Goldenscale
• Deepwater
• Tidecaller

What's my mermaid name?

Take your first name from your birthday month and your last name from the first letter of your first name. A June birthday and a name starting with M makes you Pearl Seafoam. March and June are the true ones: aquamarine and pearl are those months' birthstones.

It works well at a mermaid birthday party: write each guest's mermaid name on a paper shell, and read them out as the children arrive.

See her as the mermaid she named

Once she has her mermaid name, you can show her the mermaid. Our Mermaid Lagoon world turns one photo of your daughter into a mermaid gliding through a sunlit coral lagoon, with friendly fish and a sea turtle alongside, and keeps her real face, hair and skin tone. It prints as a jigsaw puzzle from $59, a canvas or a fleece blanket, and the chunky 30-piece puzzle is sized for ages 3 to 5. You approve a watermarked proof before anything prints. Her name, mermaid or otherwise, never goes to the image model, so the only place it appears is where you choose to write it.

What is a male mermaid called?

A merman. Myth has plenty of them, including some of the sea's gods. In Greek and Roman art, Triton's name became the general word for one.

• Triton. Son of Poseidon, who blows a conch shell to raise or calm the waves. Neptune's largest moon carries his name. Behind the Name
• Glaucus. A fisherman who ate a magical herb and grew fins and a tail, in Ovid's telling. The name means shiny or bright.
• Nereus. The old sea god, father of the Nereids. From Greek for water. Behind the Name
• Proteus. A prophetic sea god. From protos, first. Behind the Name
• Oannes. One of the fish-man sages of Mesopotamian myth.
• Ipupiara. The fish-man of Tupinambá lore in Brazil, who dragged fishermen to the bottom. Iara may have grown out of him.
• Coomara. The green-haired male merrow in "The Soul Cages", his name glossed as "sea-hound". The story passed as Irish folklore, but Thomas Keightley made it up.
• Ægir. The Norse sea giant, Rán's husband and father of the waves.
• Manannán. The sea god of Irish mythology.
• Lir. Father of the swan children in the Irish legend The Children of Lir, a name also tied to the sea god Manannán mac Lir. Behind the Name
• Dylan. Welsh dy (to) and llanw (tide). In the Mabinogi he takes to the sea straight after his baptism. Behind the Name
• Murchadh. Old Irish for "sea battle." Behind the Name
• Murdo. The Scottish form of Murchadh. Behind the Name
• Pelayo. The Spanish form of Pelagius, from pelagos, the sea. Behind the Name
• Marinus. From a Roman family name or Latin for "of the sea." Behind the Name
• Kaito. Japanese kai (sea) with to, here soar or a constellation. Behind the Name

Mermaid Lagoon is drawn for girls. For a boy who loves the sea, Pirate Cove puts him at the wheel of a tall ship above a turquoise cove.

Mermaid names for pets

A goldfish or a betta is the obvious candidate, though a cat that sits in the sink has earned one too. These are our picks.

• Goldie
• Guppy
• Finley
• Gill
• Sardine
• Neptune
• Poseidon
• Sushi
• Shrimp
• Salty

For dry-land pets, our cat names by color and dog names by color are checked the same way as this list.

Mermaid names that don't mean what the lists say

These are the corrections we made most often while checking other lists. Each one is linked to the entry that settles it.

How do you make up a mermaid name?

Start with the word for sea in another language: mar in Spanish, meri in Finnish, mor in Cornish and Welsh, muir in Irish, kai in Hawaiian. Then add a soft ending, the way Estonian turns meri into Merike. For a last name, join two sea words: salt and whisper, moon and wave, shell and song. Say it out loud with the first name before you settle on it. For a real baby name, start with the sea list above, since each of those has a documented history.

For more to share with a mermaid-mad child, our jokes for kids, sorted by age go down well at the same parties, and our gifts by what a child is obsessed with picks up from there. A mermaid name also makes a good sign-off on a birthday card, and our birthday wishes for a daughter are sorted by her age and by who's writing.

Frequently asked questions