Native American Boy Names

This page needs a caveat before it needs a list. Indigenous North America is hundreds of sovereign nations speaking dozens of unrelated language families, and in many of them a name is something given at a specific moment by a specific person, not something chosen off a website. We treat Native American boy names with that in mind: documented where documentation exists, honest about the rest. Cree takes its form from the name of the Cree Nation, whose communities stretch across Canada and into the northern United States. Kota and Lakoda are modern respellings drawn from Dakota and Lakota, two of the Sioux nations. Mato is recorded in Lakota as the word for bear, and Chaska appears in Dakota usage tied to a firstborn son.

The rest of this list came into American use through geography and through sound. Taos points to Taos Pueblo in New Mexico, a continuously inhabited community for roughly a thousand years. Utah traces back to the Ute people, and Arizona and Yuma are Southwestern place names with Indigenous roots that have been debated for a century. Cheveyo is generally attributed to Hopi. Beyond that, Calian, Tayen, Kele, Dasan, Coyote and Chayanne appear on baby-name lists with confident translations that we have not been able to verify against a primary source, so we will point you to their sound and their real U.S. usage instead of inventing a story.

Every name below opens to its full page — a sourced meaning where one genuinely exists, its U.S. popularity, and a clear audio pronunciation so you can hear it before you fall for it.