Medieval Naming Guides: Mongol

Mongol Names

The Mongols ruled a vast area of land, stretching from Russia and the Middle East to China. More information about Turkic and Central Asian naming practices, which are related to the naming practices of some of the Mongols, may be found in the Islamic and Central Asian sections of this Archive.

Middle Mongol Grammar for SCA Names, by Ursula Georges
Describes how to build a Mongol name using a patronymic, descriptive, or tribal byname.

Mongolian Naming Practices, by Marta as tu Mika-Mysliwy.
Originally published in the 1998 KWHS, updated in 2010. Contains detailed discussion on Mongolian naming practices, along with a pronunciation guide, lists of men's and women's names, and clan/tribal names, along with information about epithets and titles.

Die Personennamen und Titel der mittelmongolischen Dokumente, by Volker Rybatzki.
A dissertation that includes a dictionary of Middle Mongol names and titles (download the PDF from the link). The text is in German, but many etymologies are in English. The name list starts on p. 37 of the PDF; codes beginning with O indicate evidence from medieval sources, while codes beginning with E mark discussion of etymology. Excellent source for identifying correct transliterations and searching for names with specific meanings.

Names of The Secret History of the Mongols, by H. Daveno.
A list of names extracted from Paul Kahn, The Secret History of the Mongols, the origin of Chingis Khan (San Francisco: North Point Press, 1984), an edition of a 13th century manuscript. Another translation of this source, Francis Woodman Cleaves, The Secret History of the Mongols, was published by Harvard University Press, 1982. The web article includes masculine names, feminine names, and titles; with some notes about meanings of names and about the individuals identified. Note that at least some spellings in literary Mongolian are ambiguous, and therefore some of these transliterations, though perfectly acceptable, may be somewhat inaccurate representations of the original pronunciations.

Mongol Women's Names, by Jessica Bonner.
A short list of women's names culled from secondary sources ranging from the 12th to the 17th century.

Mongol Names in 13th Century Latin, by Mari Elspeth nic Bryan
A list of Mongol given names as recorded in a 13th century Latin document.

Academy of Saint Gabriel Report 3199
Discusses ways to identify a man as the son of Arghun. This provides a starting point for building patronymics in Mongolian.

Researching Mongol Names in the SCA, by Gülügjab Tangghudai
A review of sources for Mongol names, with notes on linguistics and possible name structure. The discussion of SCA sources is very helpful; the discussion of linguistics does not always distinguish between modern and medieval Mongolian practice, so this article alone may not give enough information to build an authentic Mongol name.

On the Documentation and Construction of Period Mongolian Names, by Baras-aghur Naran
A discussion of the grammar of multiple-element Mongol given names, with lists of names and name elements. (Before using this article to construct a name, read the review in Researching Mongol Names in the SCA.)


The Medieval Names Archive is published by Ursula Georges. It was historically published by the Academy of Saint Gabriel.
Copyright on individual articles belongs to their authors.
http://www.s-gabriel.org/names/mongol.shtml