- Meaning
- Dawn, luminous
- Origin
- Persian
- Gender
- Girl
- Urdu
- روکسانا
- Pronunciation
- rox-an-a
Is Roxana an Islamic name? Yes. Roxana is an established name in Muslim use, Persian in origin. Its settled meaning is: Dawn, luminous. Islamic tradition asks that a name carry a good meaning and claim nothing that belongs to God alone, and this name meets both.
Read the letter-by-letter reading ↓Roxana (روكسانا) reads from the Old Persian rowshanak, a diminutive of rowshan, meaning bright, luminous, the first light of dawn. The name has been carried across the Persian, Sogdian, and later Muslim worlds for more than two thousand years.
The historical Roxana (Roxane) was a Sogdian princess, daughter of the chieftain Oxyartes of Bactria, and became the wife of Alexander the Great in 327 BCE. She is remembered in later Persian tradition as the woman whose name meant "little star of dawn," and the name endured through the Sassanian and Islamic periods as a favored girls name in Iran, Afghanistan, Central Asia, and among Persian-speaking Muslim communities worldwide.
Section 1 · Arabic Root
Where the Name Comes From
Roxana is a name of Persian origin in Muslim use. It does not carry a classical Arabic triliteral root; its letters in the Arabic script are still read for their qualities in Ilm ul Huroof, as the next section shows.
Section 2 · Ilm ul Huroof
Read Letter by Letter
The letters of Roxana unpack as follows in the classical Science of Letters:
Ra (ر): the head, the direction taken · Waw (و): the hook, connection, the joining and · Kaf (ك): the palm, the hand of holding · Seen (س): the tooth, precision, the fine edge · Alif (ا): origin, standing upright, the first breath · Nun (ن): the fish, knowledge, the inkwell · Alif (ا): origin, standing upright, the first breath
Section 3 · Synthesis
What This Reading Says About You
Roxana's letters draw from many elements at once, a full palette, not a single note. This is a name that asks its bearer to hold contradictions gracefully: warmth and steadiness, movement and depth. Running through the reading is Al-Rahman, the Merciful, carried by a person as mercy that keeps moving even when tested. A person named Roxana carries a full weather system inside a single quiet chest.
Section 4 · What Families Say
What People Usually Mean by This Name
Roxana is a Persian name, carried across Persian-speaking Muslim communities from Iran through Central Asia and the South Asian Muslim world. The name comes from the Old Persian rowshanak (little bright one, little dawn), a diminutive of rowshan, and belongs to the same family as the modern Persian names Roshan and Roshanak.
Every letter of Roxana in the Arabic script has been read in the classical tradition of Ilm ul Huroof as an ontological principle: the letters do not merely spell the sound of the name, they carry the qualities the tradition ascribes to it. See the letter reading above.
In Islam, the Prophet Muhammad ﷺ said: "You will be called on the Day of Resurrection by your names and the names of your fathers, so give yourselves good names" (Abu Dawud). A well-chosen name is a lifelong invocation of the meaning it carries.
Section 5 · Bearers
Who Has Carried This Name
How to Pronounce Roxana
Parents often pair Roxana with a sibling name that shares a letter, a root, or a community tradition. Names with a strong Arabic root are traditionally paired with other classical Arabic names; names from a specific regional Muslim tradition are traditionally paired within that tradition.
Browse the AsrNaam library to find a companion name for Roxana:
Frequently Asked Questions