Hi Jennifer!

Ever since I first saw Hayao Miyazaki’s movie ‘Nausicaå of the Valley of the Wind’, I’ve loved the name of the titular character. Since your website doesn’t have it, I did a brief google search and found that it means ‘burner of ships’, but there wasn’t any citation to a reputable source, so I’m little doubtful on how accurate this.

Is this indeed the meaning of the name Nausicaå? Any information about the name would be greatly appreciated, I think it’s a beautiful name.

Thanks,
Cora

Dear Cora,
The name originates in Homer’s Odyssey, as the name of a character. The name literally just translates to “of the sea,” similar to the word nautical. It does not mean “Princess who finds Odysseus,” as most baby name sites state. That is a description of the character.

Unfortunately, this is a good example of how other sites just copy content from each other without research. Here are BabyNames.com, we pride ourselves in our research and have two international name scholars that work on our database.

Sincerely,
Jennifer

Jennifer Moss (she/her) is the founder of BabyNames.com, author of The Baby Names Workbook, and Producer of The Baby Names Podcast. Jennifer is widely regarded as the leading expert on popular baby name trends and the naming process, serving as the authoritative source on the subject for national and international media.

Jennifer entered the tech arena in the 80s as a software developer and database architect, and became a pioneer in the Internet industry. In addition to operating BabyNames.com, Jennifer owns a web development agency in central California.