Namakshar: the syllables of the nakshatra padas

A syllable for every quarter

The ecliptic is divided into twenty-seven Nakṣatras, lunar mansions of 13°20′ each, and every nakshatra into four quarters, or Pāda (Caraṇa)s, of 3°20′. That makes 108 padas. A table printed in almanacs and jataka handbooks gives one syllable to each: the avakahada chakra, named after the syllables with which its rows open, a, va, ka, ha and ḍa. The syllable of the pada the Moon occupied at birth is the namakshar, the "name-letter".

A few rows show the pattern:

• Ashvini: chū, che, cho, lā
• Bharani: lī, lū, le, lo
• Krittika: a, ī, u, e
• Rohini: o, vā, vī, vū

The syllables run through the sounds of the Devanagari alphabet in groups. Some are unusual at the start of a word: Ardra's third pada has ṅa, and Hasta's second to fourth padas give ṣa, ṇa and ṭha, sounds with which few names in Hindi or Sanskrit begin. Families commonly use a nearby sound in such cases†. For each birth nakshatra the same table also gives its rasi and a set of traditional categories: varna, yoni, gana and nadi.

The rasi follows from the arithmetic. A sign of 30° holds exactly nine padas of 3°20′, so the four padas of Ashvini, the four of Bharani and the first pada of Krittika make up Mesha, and the remaining three padas of Krittika open Vrishabha. A namakshar therefore also names the Moon sign at birth.

What the grihya sutras say

The naming ceremony, namakarana, is one of the household rites described in the Kalpa literature, in the Grihyasutras. These texts set rules for the form of a name rather than its first letter. Paraskara's Grihyasutra, for example, prescribes for a boy a name of two or four syllables, beginning with a voiced sound and containing a semivowel, and for a girl a name with an odd number of syllables ending in long ā†. The ceremony is placed on the tenth or twelfth day after birth.

Several Grihyasutras, and the Shatapatha Brahmana before them, also mention a nakshatra-nama, a name connected with the birth nakshatra, sometimes kept private†. In these older sources the connection is with the nakshatra itself or its presiding deity, such as a name formed from Rohini or from its deity Prajapati, not with a syllable assigned to a pada†. P. V. Kane's History of Dharmashastra collects the passages and the variations between schools.

Where the syllable table comes from

The avakahada chakra belongs to the later literature of muhurta and of svara-shastra, the study of correspondences between sounds and time, and to the almanac tradition. It is not in the Grihyasutras, and we have not found a securely dated early source for the table in its present form†.

Printed versions also differ. Some write short vowels where others write long ones (chu or chū), and almanacs that count Abhijit as a twenty-eighth nakshatra give different syllables to the last pada of Uttara Ashadha and the opening of Shravana. The table on our site follows the North Indian almanac form with twenty-seven nakshatras.

How the syllable is found

The method is pure computation. Take the Moon's sidereal longitude at the moment of birth, which requires an Ayanāṃśa (we use Lahiri). Divide by 13°20′ to get the nakshatra and by 3°20′ to get the pada, then look up the syllable.

A birth near the edge of a pada is sensitive to the birth time and to the ayanamsa. The Moon (Candra) crosses a pada in about six hours, so an error of a few minutes in the birth time rarely matters, but a difference of an hour can move the syllable. A different ayanamsa shifts every boundary slightly, which is one reason two almanacs can give neighbouring syllables for the same birth.

What the convention does and does not say

Choosing a name that begins with the namakshar is a widespread custom. Many families keep it as a second, "nakshatra name" used in ritual, beside the name used every day; others take the syllable as the start of the everyday name itself. It is a naming convention with a long practice behind it.

The texts that set out the table do not say that the syllable shapes a person, and we do not either. Names are chosen on many grounds besides: family, language, meaning and sound. We present the namakshar as one of those grounds, with its history and its arithmetic.

A note on sources

Readers who want to follow the older material can begin with the namakarana passages of the Grihyasutras, available in Hermann Oldenberg's translations, and with Kane's survey. For the avakahada chakra itself, a printed almanac and the table on our tools page show the form in current use.

Try it

The Name syllables tool gives the avakahada syllable for any nakshatra and pada, in Devanagari and IAST, or works it out from birth details. The Nakshatra finder shows the nakshatra, pada and working for a birth moment.

† Marked dates or readings are debated among scholars or still being confirmed by our faculty.