Indian baby names
Every name here carries what it actually means, the root that meaning comes from, and the regions where it is traditionally given. Sort them alphabetically, narrow them by region or language, or find the ones that begin with your child’s birth-star syllable.
Nothing matches all of those at once. Clearing the region or the nakshatra usually opens it up again.
Naming from the birth star
The namakarana, the naming rite, is one of the sixteen sanskaras, and is usually held on the eleventh or twelfth day after birth. The syllable is fixed before the name is: each of the twenty-seven nakshatras is divided into four padas, and each pada carries a sound — one hundred and eight in all. The child is named on the syllable of the pada the Moon occupied at the moment of birth.
The Moon changes nakshatra a little more than once a day, so this depends on the time of birth rather than the date alone. If you know the birth details but not the star, cast the kundli — it gives the nakshatra and the pada — or use find my rashi for a quicker answer. The syllables for each nakshatra are shown beside its name in the list above.
Transliteration is the awkward part. Almanacs disagree about whether a pada takes Chu or Choo, Da or Dha, and a name written two ways in English may be one name in Devanagari. The matching here folds long and short vowels together for that reason, so Aarav and Arav both count as opening on a.
Where the meanings come from
Each entry shows its root: the Sanskrit, Tamil, Persian, Arabic or Punjabi word the name is formed on. That is deliberate, because a meaning without a root is unfalsifiable, and a great many names are given glosses in circulation that their roots do not support. Aarav is the clearest case — it is given everywhere as “peaceful”, while Sanskrit ārava means a cry or a roar. Both are recorded here, and which one you want is your business rather than ours.
Where a name is a recent coinage with no settled etymology, the entry says so. Where a popular name is not Indian in origin at all, it says that too, rather than fitting it with a Sanskrit gloss after the fact.
Why there is no “top 100” here
Because it could not be sourced. India registers births but does not publish an open index of the names on those registrations, so there is no dataset from which a ranked list of the commonest names in a state or a year could honestly be built. The ranked lists elsewhere on the web are either citing a dataset they do not name, or counting their own page views, or inventing it.
What can be stated is where a name belongs: the language it comes from and the regions in which it is traditionally given. That is what the region and origin filters do, and it is checkable in a way a ranking would not be.
Meanings are given from the roots named in each entry. Regional usage describes tradition, not a survey.