Article · Wikipedia archive · Last revised Jun 5, 2026

Babar

Babar, also variously spelled as Baber, Babur, and Babor is a male given name of Persian origin. It is generally taken in reference to the Persian babr, meaning "tiger". There is a similar name in connotation to the Arabic male given form and generic name of the animal by the name "Nimr" which means "yellow-black striped cat", i.e. "tiger". The word repeatedly appears in Ferdowsi's Shahnameh and was borrowed into the Turkic languages of Central Asia.

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Babar (Urdu: بابر ), also variously spelled as Baber,1 Babur,2 and Babor is a male given name of Persian origin.3 It is generally taken in reference to the Persian babr (Persian: ببر), meaning "tiger".1 There is a similar name in connotation to the Arabic male given form and generic name of the animal by the name "Nimr" (Arabic: نَمِر namir) which means "yellow-black striped cat", i.e. "tiger". The word repeatedly appears in Ferdowsi's Shahnameh and was borrowed into the Turkic languages of Central Asia.24

Thackston argues for an alternate derivation from the PIE word "beaver", pointing to similarities between the pronunciation Bābor and the Russian bobr (бобр, "beaver").5

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References

  1. EB (1878).
  2. EB (1911).
  3. Eraly 2007, pp. 18–20.
  4. Thumb, Albert, Handbuch des Sanskrit, mit Texten und Glossar, German original, ed. C. Winter, 1953, Snippet, p. 318
  5. Babur, Emperor of Hindustan (2002). The Baburnama: Memoirs of Babur, Prince and Emperor. translated, edited and annotated by W. M. Thackston. Modern Library. ISBN 0-375-76137-3.

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