Baby name letters by nakshatra – namakshara for all 108 padas

The traditional first letter of a baby's name for each nakshatra pada (namakshara, nama nakshatram), in Telugu script with English spelling, and a tool that finds the nakshatra, pada and rasi from the date, time and place of birth. The table was checked against six published versions; where they differ, every difference is listed below.

Find the letter from the date of birth

Namakshara table: 27 nakshatras × 4 padas

Telugu letter with the usual English spelling; vowel length is not significant (see below). Click a nakshatra for its page.

Sources and how the letters were chosen

How the letters were chosen: six published versions of the table were transcribed and compared, ignoring vowel length (the verses quoted in Appakaviyamu count five vowels – a, i, u, e, o – and treat short and long as one, so చూ and చు are the same letter). All six give the same letter for 76 of the 108 padas; the three Telugu sources agree with each other on 88. The letter shown is the one at least two of the three Telugu sources give, in its most common spelling; where all three Telugu sources differ (1 pada), all three are shown. Every pada where a source gives a different letter is listed under 'Where the sources differ'.

1. Thraitha panchangam – Thraitha Sakha Panchangam, p. 19 (table taken from Prabodhananda Yogeeswarulu's 'Jyotishya Sastramu') – Telugu Wikisource (source)
2. prokerala (Telugu) – prokerala.com nakshatra finder, Telugu edition ('మొదటి అక్షరం'); the Telugu Wikipedia article 'నామనక్షత్రము' gives the same list (source)
3. Appakaviyamu – Appakaviyamu (Kakunuri Appakavi, 17th c.), varna paricchedamu, quoting the Kalajnakalpa verses – 1966 edition, Telugu Wikisource pp. 219–220 (source)
4. Wikipedia (English) / prokerala (English) – English Wikipedia, 'Nakshatra', Padas table (Devanagari); prokerala.com's English nakshatra finder gives the same list (source)
5. Wikipedia (Marathi) – Marathi Wikipedia, 'नक्षत्र', table of 27 nakshatras with the four pada letters (Devanagari) (source)
6. Wikipedia (Sanskrit) – Sanskrit Wikipedia, 'नक्षत्रम्', section 'नक्षत्राणां चरणाक्षराणि' (the traditional 'chū che cho lā' list, Devanagari) (source)

Where the sources differ

Differences in vowel length only (26 padas) are not listed. Devanagari spellings are given with their Telugu-script equivalent.

How the nakshatra and pada are computed

Each nakshatra is 13°20′ of the sidereal zodiac and each pada 3°20′; the birth nakshatra and pada are where the Moon was at the minute of birth. The tool uses the same engine as this site's panchangam and nakshatra finder (NASA/JPL DE440s ephemeris, Lahiri ayanamsa); for 50 test births from 1962 to 2031 in India, the USA, the UK, the Gulf, Singapore and Australia it gives the same nakshatra, pada and rasi as prokerala.com (50 of 50).

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