Note: I’m Indian-American and have two half-Hmong-American boys, Kai and Ajay, so I’ve spent way too much time thinking about this very niche issue, even making two top-10 lists of all the baby boy names we considered. Hope this helps someone!
I had two goals when naming my kids Kai and Ajay:
- Easy to pronounce in all languages.
- Meaningful in a native language.
Here are my favorite meanings of my boys’ names:
- Kai:
- “Victory, triumphant” (凯/凱) [Mandarin]
- “Lovable” [Swahili]
- “Ocean” (海) [Japanese]
- “Fire” [Scottish]
- Ajay:
- “Unconquered, invincible” (अजय) [Sanskrit]
Here are the Indian-American baby boy names we considered:
Common Western-Sounding Names:
- Ajay (AJ)
- Jay
- Krish (Chris)
- Neil
- Nikhil (Nick)
- Om
- Samir (Sam)
- Shaan (Shawn)
- Vikram (Vic)
- Zayn
Unique Modern Indian Names:
- Avi
- Dev
- Kal
- Nitin
- Raj
- Sahil
- Sai
- Tej
- Veer
- Yash
(I usually write about important stuff like the World’s Biggest Problems.)
Published by Neil Thanedar
Neil Thanedar is an entrepreneur, investor, scientist, activist, and author.
He is currently Executive Director of the Michigan Campaign Finance Network, a nonprofit fighting dark money in politics. He is also the author of Positive Politics, a proven playbook on how to get into politics and do good.
Since 2012, Neil has been founder & chairman of Labdoor (YC W15), the independent worldwide alternative to the FDA. He is also an angel investor with his fund Utopic, backing pre-seed biotech startups led by scientist CEOs. He was previously co-founder and president of Avomeen, a product development and testing lab acquired for $30M+ in 2016.
He has also served as Executive Director of The Detroit Partnership and Senior Advisor to his father Shri Thanedar in his campaigns for Governor, State House, and US Congress in Michigan.
Neil earned his BS (Cellular & Molecular Biology) and BBA (Entrepreneurship) from the University of Michigan in 2010. He was born and raised in St. Louis, Missouri where he graduated from MICDS.
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