40 names here are recorded as English given names derived from Sanskrit — Bodhi, Arya, Kali, Tara, Leela, Uma. A small slice, and the one with the clearest sound signature in the catalogue.
Soft, short and two-beat
17 of the 40 classify soft-sounding — the highest proportion of any recorded origin here — and 31 are two syllables. 16 are four letters or fewer, which for a two-syllable name means open vowels doing most of the work.
That is not a claim about Sanskrit. It is a fact about which Sanskrit-derived names English-speaking owners adopted: the ones that are easy to say in English got adopted, and those skew soft and short.
The gender lean
19 measure female against 12 male, which is the strongest female lean of any origin in this catalogue. Arya, Tara, Leela, Uma and Maya carry most of the weight.
They average 72 registrations each — below the busier origins, which is what a smaller and more recent adoption looks like in register data.
One name is missing on purpose
Maya sits in four origin categories at once — Latin, Greek, Hebrew and Sanskrit — and this site records no origin for it rather than picking one. Eighty-five names are in that position. An origin with four candidate answers is not an answer, and the catalogue would rather leave the field empty than choose for you.
What are Sanskrit pet names?
Names a dictionary records as English given names derived from Sanskrit. 40 are in this catalogue, led by Bodhi, Arya, Kali and Tara.
Why do they all sound soft?
17 of the 40 classify soft-sounding, the highest share of any origin here. That reflects which names English speakers adopted rather than anything about the language.
Why is Maya not listed?
It sits in four origin categories — Latin, Greek, Hebrew and Sanskrit — so this site records none of them. Eighty-five names are refused that way rather than assigned a guess.
Every count on this site is a tally of real registrations: pet licences and shelter intakes published as open data by New York, Seattle, Austin, Montgomery County, Cambridge, Zurich, Basel and four Australian councils. Popularity here is the average share a name holds across those registers, so a name common in a small city is not buried by one common in a large one. Five of the eleven registers are North American and they supply 86% of the records, so read the ordering as naming in those places rather than worldwide. Browse the whole catalogue or read how the data is put together.