Adonis

ah-DON-iss

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The name Adonis means “lord, handsome one.” It comes from the Greek language tradition.

In Greek mythology, Adonis was a mortal of extraordinary beauty loved by Aphrodite, the goddess of love. His story of death and resurrection became linked to seasonal cycles and vegetation cults, making him a powerful symbol of beauty, desire, and renewal.

From the Greek Ἄδωνις, borrowed from a Semitic source — the Phoenician adon, meaning lord, the same word behind the Hebrew adonai. The Greeks took the title of a god and made it a personal name, which is why it means lord without ever having been a Greek word.

In Greek myth Adonis is a mortal of extraordinary beauty loved by Aphrodite and killed by a wild boar, with the anemone springing from his blood. The cult behind the myth is older and Near Eastern, descending from the Mesopotamian Dumuzi and the Levantine Tammuz. By the eighteenth century an Adonis was ordinary English for a strikingly handsome man.

• Adonis (Ali Ahmad Said Esber, celebrated Syrian-Lebanese poet)
• Adonis Stevenson (Haitian-Canadian boxing champion)

Sibling names that share Adonis's rhythm and register without echoing it too closely.