Baby Names › By letter
26 names for boys beginning with U, each with the meaning our corpus records and the Devanagari spelling where we hold one.
U opens with Uma and usha — the goddess and the dawn — and gives some of the softest-sounding Indian names.
There are 26 here, each printed with its meaning and its Devanagari spelling where we hold one. Families usually arrive at a letter for one of three reasons: the birth nakshatra's pada suggests a syllable, a grandparent's name begins with it, or the family simply likes how it sounds with the surname.
Every name comes from our verified name corpus — the editorial workbooks our team maintains, cross-checked against United States birth-registration data. Names we hold no meaning for are left out rather than padded in, which is why this list is shorter than the ones that scrape a dictionary.
26 names, each with the meaning our corpus records for it.
| Name | Meaning | In Devanagari |
|---|---|---|
| Uday | Dawn | उदय |
| Udar | Noble, Generous | उदार |
| Udarsh | Brave, Strong | उदर्श |
| Udayan | Rising; one who rises like the sun at dawn | उदयन |
| Udbhata | Notorious, Eminent | उद्भट |
| Udbhav | Origin, Rising | उद्भव |
| Uddhav | A friend of Krishna | उद्धव |
| Udit | Grown, Shining | उदित |
| Udumbar | Essence of tress | उडुंबर |
| Udyam | Effort | उद्यम |
| Udyan | Motive | उद्यान |
| Ujagar | Illuminated, Bright | उजागर |
| Ujjwal | Light | उज्ज्वल |
| Ujwalraj | Bright king | उज्वलराज |
| Ulhas | Excitement, joy | उल्लास |
| Umakant | Lord Shiva | उमाकांत |
| Umesh | Lord Shiva | उमेश |
| Upendra | Lord Vishnu | उपेंद्र |
| Upkar | Favour, Kindness | उपकार |
| Urvish | Lord of Earth | उर्वीश |
| Ushnik | Warm, Energetic | उष्णिक |
| Utkarsh | To grow | उत्कर्ष |
| Utkrisht | Excellent, Outstanding | उत्कृष्ट |
| Utpal | Lotus | उत्पल |
| Utsarg | Dedication, Devotion | उत्सर्ग |
| Utsav | Celebration | उत्सव |
Say the shortlist with the surname, out loud, several times. A name that is lovely alone can be unsayable in full, and the full version is what a teacher will read from a register.
Fix the spelling before you register the birth. Romanised Indian names have several accepted spellings — the one on the birth certificate has to match the school record, the passport and the Aadhaar that follow it, and correcting them later is genuinely painful.
If your family follows the panchang, the birth nakshatra's pada decides the traditional syllable. Our birth star calculator gives the star, the pada and its syllable from the date and time of birth — start there, then look for a name on this page that fits.
And check the short form and the initials, because those are what the child will actually be called.
Q: How many boys' names starting with U are on this page? — 26, each with a recorded meaning. Names whose meaning we cannot verify are not listed.
Q: Which is the most used? — Of the names here, Uday (dawn) has the highest 2025 US birth count. Within India, popularity varies a great deal by state and community.
Q: Is my baby's nakshatra syllable the same as this letter? — Not necessarily. The panchang syllables are written in Devanagari and do not map one-to-one onto English letters — "Ch", "Sh" and "Th" are single sounds, for instance. Use the birth star calculator for the syllable, then match it to the Devanagari spellings in the table.
Q: Do you have girls' names for this letter? — Yes, on its own page, along with lists for the other letters and for names grouped by meaning.
Published by: theAsianparent editorial team
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