Arjun
Masculine · Sanskrit roots · “Bright”
Arjun is one of the oldest names still in everyday use anywhere: it belongs to the archer prince of the Mahabharata, the one Krishna counsels on the battlefield in the Bhagavad Gita, and it has been spoken continuously across South Asia ever since. Two syllables, both of them landing cleanly in English, and a spelling that gives up its sound on the first try.
How old is the name Arjun?
Arjun first appears in US birth records in 1967 — 58 years ago. The typical Arjun is a kid of about 10 — this name's wave is very recent. About 12,000 people named Arjun are estimated to be alive in the US today.
When was the name Arjun most popular?
Arjun peaked in 2014, reaching #455 nationally. Today it ranks #490, 35 places below that high. See the whole 2014 chart.
Arjun appears on this list:
Where it comes from
From Arjuna (Sanskrit) to Arjun
The story of Arjun
The name is Sanskrit, and its great anchor is the Mahabharata, the epic compiled over centuries in ancient India, where Arjuna is the third of the five Pandava brothers and the finest archer among them. The Bhagavad Gita is set in the pause before he must fight, and it is addressed to him by name, which fixed the name in the religious and literary memory of an entire subcontinent. From there it spread with Sanskrit itself — into Hindi, Punjabi, Bengali, Tamil, Telugu and Malayalam, and eastward into Java and Bali, where Arjuna is a central figure of the wayang shadow-puppet theater. The shorter Arjun is the ordinary modern spoken form across northern India, and that is the form that traveled to the United States with families from the mid-twentieth century onward.
Meaning
Bright, shining, white or silver
From Sanskrit arjuna. The root belongs to a very old Indo-European family of words for brightness and silver — the same one that gives Latin argentum and, through it, the element name argon.
How the name formed
- ArjunaSanskrit
- ArjunHindi, Punjabi, Bengali
- ArjunEnglish
Related forms: Arjuna · Arjuna · Arjunan · Arjuna · Arjan · Arjun
Pronouncing Arjun
AR-jun
First syllable stressed, the a as in 'far', the j as in 'jump', and the second syllable short — closer to 'jun' than 'joon'. In Hindi the r is lightly tapped, but the English version is close enough that most people say it correctly unprompted.
Nicknames for Arjun
High
What the data says
146 years of official birth records
The long climb, and where it stands now
The same years in position rather than babies
- First recorded
- 1967
- Most boys named
- 2014650 — the highest on record
- Peak rank
- #455reached in 2014
- Change vs 2024
- +25.3%615 in 2025, from 491
Rank is a position, a count is a headcount, and they move independently — a name can hold its rank while the number of babies behind it falls. Source: U.S. Social Security Administration.
Arjun in other languages
The same name elsewhere
- Arjuna in Sanskrit — same name
- Arjuna in Javanese / Indonesian — same name
- Arjunan in Tamil — related form
- Arjuna in Sinhala — transliteration
- Arjan in Punjabi — related form
- Arjun in Bengali — same name
Strongest US states over the last decade: California, Texas, New Jersey.
Arjuns among us
people named Arjun are estimated to be alive in the US today
About 1 boy in 2,777 born in 2025 was named Arjun
Estimated from SSA birth records and published actuarial life tables. Method
Is it right for you
What happens to a name after it peaks
The Alvaro test
Every popular name lives one long story — a climb, a peak, a slow settling back. Arjun's later chapters haven't been written yet, so we borrowed them: Alvaro climbed just as high around 1985, and its whole arc is on record. Line the two peaks up, and Alvaro's path sketches the road Arjun is walking now.
Arjun sits in the calm middle of the cycle — neither chasing a wave nor sliding off one. Middle-of-the-cycle names age slowly and predictably.
A scored estimate from 146 years of naming cycles — not a prophecy. Great names outlive statistics. How this is scored
Where Arjun is headed
Arjun should hold steady through 2030 — the curve is flat, and flat curves are the most predictable kind.
High confidence — fitted on official counts through 2025.
A damped-trend projection of the official birth data — a sketch of momentum, not a promise. Every name's forecast, ranked.
Arjun beside its neighbors
The names ranked closest to Arjun in 2025, in babies rather than position — the bars are to scale.
US boys given each name in 2025.
The trade-off
- Spelled the way it sounds for an English reader, with no silent letters and no ambiguous vowels.
- Documented in continuous use for well over two thousand years, from the Sanskrit epics to present-day birth records.
- Works in many languages at once — Hindi, Tamil, Bengali, Punjabi, Indonesian — with only small changes at the ending.
- Short forms already exist in real use, from Arj at school to Arju at home, so the name flexes without being reinvented.
- Some English speakers will stretch it to 'ar-JOON' or flatten the first vowel on a first reading. One correction usually fixes it, but expect to make it.
- Arjun, Arjan and Arjuna all circulate in the US, so spelling it out over the phone will become routine.
- In American records the name's wave is recent, so most Arjuns here are still young. That means few adult namesakes close at hand, even though the name itself is ancient elsewhere.
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What they receive
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Arjun
Masculine · Sanskrit roots · #490 in the U.S.
Frequently asked
- How many Arjuns are there in the world?
- No country counts the world's names, so there is no worldwide figure — anyone quoting one is estimating. About 12,000 people named Arjun are estimated to be alive in the US today.
- How popular is the name Arjun in 2025?
- Arjun ranks #490 among US boy names in 2025, with 615 babies given the name.
- How rare is the name Arjun?
- About 1 in every 2,777 US boys born in 2025 was named Arjun — 615 in all.
- Will my child share the name Arjun with classmates?
- Arjun will almost certainly be the only one in school.
Ranked beside Arjun
Names sitting at a similar level of popularity right now.
Rodrigo#491 · Caspian#491 · Sean#489 · Collin#493 · Rowen#486 · Nasir#486 · Edgar#486 · Leland#494
Looking for what else is popular rather than what resembles Arjun? See the current top 100.
Choosing between Arjun and another name?
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US figures from the Social Security Administration. 1880–2025. Data & methodology
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