75 Baby Names Inspired by Famous Philosophers

Philosophers are some of the most influential people and thinkers of our lifetime. They have laid down the framework for important progress in areas such as mathematics and physics.

More: 75 Inspirational Names that Exude Positivity

Below is a list of well-known boy, girl, and gender-neutral names in philosophy that would be meaningful and unique choices for a little one being brought into this world. When they grow up and ask how their name came to be, you will be able to provide them with a wonderful history lesson so they know just how crucial advances in philosophy are to our society. 

Philosopher Girl Names

1. Anne - Anne Conway was an English philosopher and she wrote a single treatise of philosophy that was influenced by contemporary philosophers.
2. Antoinette - Antoinette Brown Blackwell was an American philosopher and the first woman to be ordained as a Protestant minister in the US.
3. Aspasia - Aspasia was a Greek philosopher and a very influential writer in Ancient Greece.
4. Ayn - Ayn Rand was an American writer and philosopher who is credited for developing Objectivism.
5. Ban - Ban Zhao was a Chinese philosopher and the first known female Chinese historian.
6. Catherine - Catherine Trotter Cockburn was an English writer and philosopher who focused on moral philosophy.
7. Clea - This is a shortened name for Themisoclea who is also known as Aristoclea who was one of the first European philosophers.
8. Damaris - Lady Damaris Cudworth Masham was an English philosopher and writer who was best known as the "Lockean feminist" because of her work and friendship with John Locke.
9. Diotima - Diotima of Mantinea is the name of a fictional figure that is featured in Plato's Symposium.
10. Edith - Saint Edith Stein was a German-Jewish philosopher who eventually became a patron saint of Europe after converting to Catholicism.
11. Elizabeth - Elizabeth of the Palatinate was a German philosopher who worked closely with Rene Descartes.
12. Emilie - Emilie du Chatelet was a French philosopher and her biggest project was translating Isaac Newton's Principia into French.
13. Hannah - Hannah Arendt was an American philosopher and political scientist born in Germany and best known for her work in totalitarianism.
14. Harriet - Harriet Taylor Mill was a British philosopher and large involved in women's rights, and she wrote many works on the women's suffrage movement.
15. Helena - Helena Blavatsky was a Russian philosopher who co-founded the Theosophical Society.
16. Heloise - Heloise d'Artgenteuill was a French nun and philosopher of love and friendship.
17. Hildegard - Saint Hildegard of Bingen was a German philosopher who was believed to have been the founder of scientific natural history in Germany.
18. Hypatia - Hypatia was an astronomer and philosopher in Egypt who taught philosophy and astronomy at the Neoplatonic School in Alexandria.
19. Iris - Dame Irish Murdoch was a British and Irish philosopher who wrote several novels and had a large role in moral philosophy as well as her interpretations of Aristotle and Plato.
20. Jacqueline - Jacqueline Broad is an Australian philosopher and professor at Monash University in Australia, who is known for writing Women Philosophers of the Seventeenth Century.
21. Juana - Juana Ines de la Cruz was a Mexican philosopher and writer who made many contributions to literature during the Spanish Golden Age.
22. Judith - Judith Jarvis Thomson was an American philosopher and elected to the American Philosophical Society because of her work on the trolley problem.
23. Laura - Laura Ruetsche was an American philosopher and the Chair of the department of philosophy at the University of Michigan.
24. Macrina - Saint Macrina the Younger was a universalist and nun in the Early Christian Catholic Church.
25. Maitreyi - Maitreyi was an Indian philosopher during the Vedic period and a symbol of Indian intellectual women.
26. Mary - Mary Astell was an English writer and philosopher and was famous for being the first English feminist.
27. Philippa - Philippa Foot was an English philosopher who was credited with inventing the trolley problem and one of the founders of contemporary virtue ethics.
28. Rosa - Rosa Luxemburg was a Polish and German philosopher and co-founded the anti-war Spartacus League.
29. Ruth - Ruth Marcus was an American philosopher who is known for developing the principle called the Barcan formula.
30. Simone - Simone de Beauvoir was a French philosopher who wrote several works and had a significant influence on female existentialism.
31. Sosipatra - Sosipatra of Pergamum was a Greek Neoplatonist philosopher and said to have mystical powers.
32. Susanne - Susanne Langer was one of the first American women in history to have a career in philosophy.
33. Thecla - Saint Thecla was very knowledgeable in philosophy and was known as one of Paul's apostles.
34. Tullia - Tullia d-Aragona was an Italian philosopher who was a large influence on many male philosophers and worked hard to gain status as equal to men.

Philosopher Boy Names

35. Alan - Alan Watts was a British philosopher who has written many works involving Buddhism.
36. Aristotle - Aristotle was a Greek philosopher in ancient Greece who learned under Plato and founded the philosophy of treatise the Aristotelian tradition.
37. ​Arthur - Arthur Schopenhauer was a German philosopher who is most known for writing The World as Will and Representation.
38. Baruch - Baruch Spinoza was a Dutch philosopher and one of the early thinkers of the Enlightenment as well as a leading figure of the Dutch Golden Age.
39. ​Bertrand - Bertrand was a British polymath who is credited with being one of the founders of analytic philosophy.
40. Cicero - Marcus Cicero was a Roman philosopher and one of Rome's greatest orators during the establishment of the Roman Empire.
41. Confucius - Confucius was a Chinese philosopher who founded Confucianism and went on to be one of the most influential people in history.
42. David - David Hume was a Scottish Enlightenment Philosopher and most of his work was dedicated to proving that human knowledge comes only from experience by writing several works on naturalism.
43. Democritus - Democritus was an ancient Greek Socratic philosopher known for creating the atomic theory of the universe.
44. Diogenes - Diogenes the Cynic was a Greek philosopher and one of the founders of cynicism.
45. Epicurus - Epicurus was an ancient Greek philosopher who founded Epicureanism.
46. Friedrich - Friedrich Nietzsche was a German philosopher and the youngest person to ever become the Chair of Classical Philology at the University of Basel.
47. Gandhi - Mahatma Gandhi was an anti-colonial nationalist who leads the campaign for India's independence through nonviolence.
48. Georg - Georg Hegel was a German philosopher and an important figure in Western philosophy and German idealism.
49. Gottfried - Gottfried Leibniz was a German polymath who made countless contributions to philosophy and physics.
50. Hobbes - Thomas Hobbes was an English philosopher who is best known for his book Leviathan.
51. Immanuel - Immanuel Kant was a German philosopher is an influential figure who developed a doctrine of transcendental idealism.
52. Jean-Paul - Jean-Paul Sartre was a French philosopher and a key figure in existentialism and phenomenology.
53. Karl - Karl Marx was a German philosopher who was best known for his theories about capitalism and advocating for communism.
54. Locke - John Locke was an English philosopher who was known as the "Father of Liberalism."
55. Ludwig - Ludwig Wittgenstein was an Austrian-British philosopher who worked to understand artificial vs natural intelligence and the dependence of technology on learning.
56. Marcus - Marcus Aurelius was a Roman Emperor and Stoic philosopher as well as the last emperor of the Pax Romana.
57. Niccolo - Niccolo Machiavelli was an Italian philosopher during the Renaissance and was best known for his political treatise called The Prince.
58. Noam - Noam Chomsky was an American philosopher and one of the founders of the cognitive science field.
59. Pascal - Blaise Pascal was a French philosopher who formulated Pascal's principle of pressure.
60. Plato - Plato was an Athenian philosopher who founded the Platonist School of Thought and The Academy and is considered one of the most influential individuals in history.
61. Pythagoras - Pythagoras of Samos was a Greek philosopher and founder of Pythagoreanism.
62. Rousseau - Jean-Jacques Rousseau was a Genevan philosopher and hugely influenced the progress of the Enlightenment period.
63. Sigmund - Sigmund Freud was an Austrian neurologist and philosopher who founded psychoanalysis.
64. Socrates - Socrates was a Greek philosopher who is the founder of Western philosophy and the Socratic Method.
65. Soren - Soren Kierkegaard was a Danish philosopher and is known as the first existentialist.
66. Thomas - Thomas Aquinas was an Italian philosopher and also known as the Doctor Angelicus.
67. Voltaire - Francois Arouet or Voltaire was a French philosopher and a prominent Enlightenment thinker.
68. Zeno - Zeno of Elea was a Greek philosopher before Socrates and the inventor of the dialectic.

Gender Neutral Philosopher Names

69. Blaise - Blaise Pascal was a French philosopher as previously mentioned, and also a prominent author during the French Classical Period.
70. Eliot - T.S. Eliot was an American poet and a prominent figure in Modernist poetry who studied philosophy at the Sorbonne.
71. Emerson - Ralph Waldo Emerson was an American philosopher and essayist who is known for his lectures and his essay Self-Reliance.
72. Francis - Francis Bacon was an English philosopher who promoted the scientific method.
73. Rene - Rene Descartes was a French philosopher and mathematician who is known for inventing analytical geometry.
74. Samuel - Samuel Alexander was an Australian-British philosopher and won the Green moral philosophy prize in 1887.
75. Seneca - Seneca the Younger was a Roman Stoic philosopher and is a major figure in stoicism and the Roman Imperial Period.

For more baby name inspiration check out these popular baby name lists:

• Top 1000 Most Popular Baby Girl Names in the U.S.
• Top 1000 Most Popular Baby Boy Names in the U.S.
• The 100 Coolest Baby Names in the World

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