90 girl names that mean sea, ocean or water

Why sea names never date

Naming a daughter for the sea is one of the oldest impulses in European naming. Anglo-Saxon parents used the element sǣ; Irish families muir, Cornish families mor, Greek families thalassa and pelagos, Latin-speaking families mare. Norse families named girls for individual kinds of wave — the same instinct arriving separately everywhere the water reached.

The practical consequence matters more than the history. A trend name is anchored to the decade that made it and carries that decade for life. A sea name is anchored to something that has not changed and will not — which is why Marina reads the same in 1926 and in 2026.

What follows is grouped by meaning, and every entry carries a language and a literal sense, because on a page like this the etymology is the value.

The twelve strongest sea names

Each of these twelve contains a genuine word for the sea.

Names that literally mean “sea”

Names in which a word for the sea is the substance, not the suggestion.

• Marina

  Latin marinus, “of the sea.” The oldest sea name in Europe.

• Maris

  Latin, “of the sea,” from the title Stella Maris, “star of the sea.”

• Maren

  Danish and Norwegian, from Latin marinus — long the commonest name in coastal Denmark.

• Marin

  French and Romanian, from the same Latin root; the French feminine is Marine.

• Morwenna

  Cornish, built on mor, “sea”; Saint Morwenna named Morwenstow on the Cornish coast.

• Muriel

  Irish Muirgheal: muir “sea” + geal “bright.” Literally “bright sea.”

• Muirgen

  Irish, muir “sea” + gen “born”: “born of the sea.”

• Marisol

  Spanish, mar “sea” + sol “sun.”

• Océane

  French, from océan, ultimately Greek Ōkeanos.

• Thalassa

  Greek θάλασσα, “the sea.” A moon of Neptune carries it.

• Pelagia

  Greek pelagos, “the open sea” — the deep water beyond the shallows.

• Kai

  Hawaiian, “sea.” One syllable, and the meaning is exact.

• Meredith

  Welsh Maredudd, usually read “great lord.” The gloss “sea lord” takes the first element as môr, “sea” — popular rather than documented.

• Doria

  Italian, from Greek Dōris, the Oceanid who mothered the sea nymphs.

• Delmare

  From Spanish del mar, “of the sea.” Also Delmar, Delmara.

• Saelira

  Old English sǣ “sea” + Latin lira “furrow”: literally “furrow of the sea,” borne as “pearl of the sea.” Said say-LEER-uh.

The sea in two languages at once

Waves, tides and moving water

Not the sea as a place but the sea in motion — wave, tide, current.

• Ondine

  French, from Latin unda, “wave.” The Italian and Spanish form is Ondina.

• Undine

  Latin unda, “wave,” through the water spirit of Renaissance natural philosophy.

• Nerissa

  Greek Nēreïs, “sea nymph,” a daughter of Nereus; used by Shakespeare in The Merchant of Venice.

• Nerida

  From the same Greek Nēreïs. Long established in Australia, unusual elsewhere.

• Nereida

  Spanish, “sea nymph.” The fullest and most transparent of the Nereid names.

• Marea

  Italian and Spanish, “tide.” A true word name, and a quiet one.

• Marella

  Italian, a diminutive shape read against mare, “sea.”

• Lorelei

  German: Middle High German lureln “to murmur” + ley “rock” — the rock above the fast water of the Rhine.

• Tallulah

  An American place name from Georgia, of Choctaw origin, glossed “leaping water” after Tallulah Falls. The unrelated Irish Tuilelaith gives the same spelling.

• Aallotar

  Finnish, aalto “wave” + the feminine suffix -tar: “she of the wave.”

• Cordelia

  Recorded as Cordeilla by Geoffrey of Monmouth, probably from Welsh Creiddylad. The reading “heart of the sea” joins Latin cor to a Welsh sea element — association, not documented derivation.

• Nixie

  Germanic Nixe, the water sprite of German and Dutch folklore; from Old High German nihhus.

• Rivera

  Spanish and Italian, from ribera, “bank, shore.”

• Rhiannon

  Welsh Rigantona, “great queen,” a figure of the Mabinogi. Often filed with sea names, though the root is regal, not marine.

Pearls, coral and what the sea gives up

The second great family of ocean names does not name the water but what comes out of it — and it is the largest group here, because one Greek word for “pearl” seeded half of Europe. Margaret, from Greek margarítēs, has meant “pearl” for two thousand years, and every name below is a form of it:

• Margaret
• Marguerite
• Margarita
• Margot
• Greta
• Rita
• Marjorie
• Maisie
• Mairead
• Marit
• Daisy

Marjorie is the medieval English form, coloured by the herb marjoram; Mairead is Irish and Scottish Gaelic and Maisie its Scottish pet form; Marit is Norwegian and Swedish. Daisy belongs for a charming reason — the French for the flower is marguerite, so Daisy became a nickname for Margaret by translation.

• Perla

  Spanish and Italian, “pearl,” from Latin. Two syllables, no ambiguity.

• Perle

  French and German, “pearl.” Older in use and more austere than Perla.

• Pearl

  English, the word itself — a Victorian jewel name, and the plainest form of the idea.

• Coral

  English, from Greek korállion through Latin — valued as a gem around the Mediterranean since antiquity.

• Coralie

  French elaboration of Coral.

• Coralia

  The Latinate form — longer, more formal, rarer than Coralie.

• Amber

  From Arabic ʿanbar, which first meant ambergris — a substance of the sea — before transferring to the Baltic shore resin.

• Saelira

  Old English sǣ + Latin lira, borne as “pearl of the sea” — the same jewel as Margaret, by a different road, with the water added.

Mother-of-pearl itself — nacre, from Arabic through French — has never settled into a given name.

Sea creatures and sea birds

Names taken from what lives in the water, or above it.

• Halcyon

  Greek alkyōn, “kingfisher” — the bird said to nest on the open sea at midwinter and calm it, hence “halcyon days.”

• Alcyone

  Greek, the same word used as a personal name; also one of the Pleiades.

• Delphine

  French, from Latin Delphina and Greek delphís, “dolphin.”

• Ceto

  Greek kētos, “sea creature, whale” — the root of cetacean.

• Sirena

  Spanish and Italian, “mermaid,” from Greek Seirēn.

• Gwylan

  Welsh, “seagull.” Rare, genuine and unambiguously coastal.

• Gaviota

  Spanish, “seagull” — a word name rather than a traditional one, but it scans like one.

• Lark

  English, the songbird. Not marine, but the same impulse — and an excellent middle name beside a sea first.

Nordic and Germanic sea names

The Norse named the sea in unusual detail. Old Norse poetry gives nine daughters to Rán and Ægir, each a different kind of wave — which is how the Nordic languages ended up with everyday girls' names that mean, precisely, “wave.” The last two below keep the company rather than the meaning; they are here because parents weigh them alongside the rest.

• Sæunn

  Old Norse sær “sea” + unnr “wave.” Still used in Iceland; the purest sea compound in the Nordic languages.

• Sædís

  Old Norse sær “sea” + dís “lady, goddess.” Icelandic and very uncommon.

• Bylgja

  Old Norse, “wave” — one of the nine wave-daughters of the Eddas, and a living Icelandic name.

• Hrönn

  Old Norse hrǫnn, “wave.” Another of the nine, and common in Iceland today.

• Bára

  Icelandic, “wave.” Soft, two syllables, entirely transparent in Iceland.

• Unn

  Old Norse unnr, “wave.” Borne in the sagas by Unn the Deep-Minded, who sailed to Iceland.

• Ran

  Old Norse Rán, the sea goddess who draws the drowned into her net; the ordinary noun means “plunder.” Best chosen knowingly.

• Signy

  Old Norse Signý, sigr “victory” + nýr “new.” A saga name from the same coast.

• Solveig

  Old Norse Sólveig, sól “sun” + veig “strength.” Not marine, but inseparable from the Norwegian coast.

• Astrid

  Old Norse Ástríðr, áss “god” + fríðr “fair.” Likewise not a sea word, and likewise Scandinavian throughout.

Old English sǣ and Old Norse sær are the same word in two Germanic mouths — which is why Sæunn and Saelira are built the same way from opposite sides of the North Sea.

Beaches, shores and islands

The gentlest group — names for the edge of the water rather than the water itself. Mostly short, and lovely as middle names.

• Isla

  Spanish, “island,” reinforced in Britain by the Scottish island of Islay.

• Meri

  Finnish and Estonian, “sea.” Four letters, exact, almost unknown outside the Baltic.

• Kailani

  Hawaiian, kai “sea” + lani “sky, heaven”: “sea and sky.” A true compound.

• Cala

  Spanish and Catalan, “cove, small bay” — the word every Mediterranean chart carries.

• Riva

  Italian, “shore, bank.” Short and firm.

• Ria

  A drowned river valley open to the sea, from Spanish ría, “estuary.”

• Cove

  English word name: a small sheltered bay, from Old English cofa, “recess.”

• Bay

  English, from Old French baie, an inlet of the sea.

• Marnie

  Scottish, usually a short form of Marina; the unrelated Hebrew Marnina, “rejoice,” shares the sound.

• Shelly

  English place name: Old English scylf “ledge” + lēah “clearing.” Carried now for the shell in the sound.

• Merle

  French, “blackbird,” from Latin merula. Not a sea word, though the mer- opening places it here.

• Shea

  Irish, from Ó Séaghdha, “stately, admirable.” Coastal by sound rather than by meaning.

Four more from the shoreline:

• Iona
• Skye
• Islay
• Marisa

Iona, Skye and Islay are Hebridean islands, the last the source of Isla. Marisa began as a blend of Maria and Luisa, and is now read almost everywhere as mar, “sea.”

Sea names from myth

The Greek tradition's vocabulary for the ocean, preserved in personal names for three thousand years. Several are still in ordinary use in Greece.

• Amphitrite

  Greek, goddess of the sea and consort of Poseidon; generally read from amphi-, “encircling.”

• Thetis

  Greek, chief of the Nereids and mother of Achilles.

• Calypso

  Greek Kalypsō, from kalýptō, “to conceal” — the nymph of Ogygia in the Odyssey.

• Galatea

  Greek gála, “milk”: “milk-white,” for the colour of sea foam. One of the Nereids.

• Doris

  Greek dōron, “gift.” An Oceanid and mother of the fifty Nereids — the source of Doria and Nerissa.

• Nerine

  From the Nereids, and now a genus of flowers named after them.

• Leucothea

  Greek, “white goddess” — Ino, who became a sea goddess and gave Odysseus her veil to stay afloat.

• Panope

  Greek, “all-seeing.” A Nereid invoked by sailors; also Panopea.

How Germanic poets named the sea

There is a reason so many sea names are compounds rather than single nouns. Old English and Old Norse poets almost never called the sea “the sea”; they used kennings — compressed two-word metaphors that name a thing by describing it. The sea attracted more of them than any other subject:

• hronrād — “whale-road,” the sea
• swanrād — “swan's path,” the sea
• seglrād — “sail-road,” the sea
• brimhengest — “surf-stallion,” a ship

The habit ran straight into naming. Anglo-Saxon parents built names by the same logic — Sæwine (“sea-friend”), Sæberht (“sea-bright”), Sæthryth (“sea-strength”) — and Irish Muirgen is the identical move in another language. So is Kailani, sea plus sky; so is Marisol, sea plus sun; so is Saelira, sea plus furrow.

Ofer hronrāde hyran scolde — “over the whale-road he had to obey.”
Beowulf, line 10

This is why a compound sea name feels older and steadier than a single word: it is doing the oldest thing in Germanic poetry.

Choosing a sea name that isn't obvious

Questions about sea and ocean names

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Sources & further reading

Latin mare, marinus, unda and lira are entries in Lewis & Short, A Latin Dictionary; Greek thálassa, pélagos, margarítēs and kētos in Liddell & Scott. Old English sǣ and the names built on it are documented in W. G. Searle's Onomasticon Anglo-Saxonicum (1897); the sea-kennings come from Beowulf and The Seafarer. Old Norse forms follow Cleasby–Vigfússon, and the nine wave-daughters of Rán and Ægir are named in the Prose Edda. Where a derivation is popular rather than documented, it is marked as such above.

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