Names that mean peace, and the elements they are built from

The Germanic element frid

Old High German fridu and Old English frith both mean peace, and the element turns up inside a surprising number of ordinary English names. These are compounds, so the peace sense is half the name rather than the whole of it, which is exactly the sort of thing lists gloss over.

That last row matters. Old Norse friðr is cognate with the peace element but had shifted in meaning by the time these names were formed, and standard references gloss it as beautiful or beloved rather than peaceful. Sigrid is "victory" plus that element, not "victorious peace".

The Semitic root s-l-m

Hebrew shalom and Arabic salam are the same root, and it produces names in both languages that mean peace, wholeness or safety.

The words Islam and Muslim come from the same three consonants, through the sense of submitting and so being made whole. That is a genuine relationship and worth knowing, though it is not what the given names above mean.

Latin, Greek and Slavic

Latin pax gives Spanish Paz, used as a woman's name and also as the Marian title Nuestra Señora de la Paz, and Italian Pace. Greek eirene gives Irene, Irina and Eirini, and the meaning is exact rather than approximate. Slavic mir means both peace and world, which is why Miroslav, Vladimir and Mira all touch this meaning without any of them being simply "peace": Miroslav is peace plus glory, Vladimir is rule plus the same element, and Mira on its own is genuinely ambiguous between Slavic, Latin and Sanskrit sources.

Sanskrit, Swahili and Turkish

Amani carries a homonym worth flagging. Arabic amani is a separate word meaning wishes or aspirations, and the two are not related. Both are used as names, so a child called Amani may have a Swahili peace name or an Arabic wish name depending on the family.

Peace names for boys

Unusually for a meaning of this kind, the male options here are stronger than the female ones, because the Germanic compounds are mostly men's names and the Semitic root produces more of them too.

Peace names in the twentieth century

Two names on this page have modern political histories that are worth knowing before you choose them. Shanti travelled into English through the closing lines of Eliot's The Waste Land and later through the peace movement, which means it may read to some British ears as a borrowing rather than as an Indian name. Amani and Salama were both taken up during the independence period in East Africa, when Kiswahili words with civic meanings were deliberately promoted as given names. Neither history disqualifies a name. Both change what it signals, and that is worth knowing in advance rather than discovering later. Shanti also carries a small practical warning: it is used for both sexes in India, and British forms that ask you to tick one will not know that.

The symbols, which are not meanings

Olive and Olivia are constantly listed here because of the olive branch, and Paloma and Jonah because of the dove. These are symbols of peace, not words for it: Olivia means the olive tree, Paloma means dove, Jonah means dove in Hebrew. That is not a reason to avoid them — Olivia was the most popular girls' name in both England and Wales and the United States in 2025 — but if the meaning is the point, it is not this meaning. Casimir is a further case: the Polish Kazimierz contains a peace or glory element, and the compound's overall sense is disputed rather than settled.