Given name · also Latin
Roxane
“born with the morning's first light”
Roxane connects a classical record with a probable Persian origin.
Original Persianروشنک
Meaning & origin
What it means
Roxane is a variant of Roxanne. One Persian interpretation is “born with the morning's first light.”
Explained through its name family
Where it comes from
This spelling has been associated with Latin and Persian naming traditions.
How it developed
From French Roxane, from Ancient Greek Ῥωξᾱ́νη, from Old Persian *rauxšnā, from Proto-Indo-European *lówksneh₂.
Adapted from Wiktionary (CC BY-SA 4.0)
The story
A form of Roxane is recorded as the name of Alexander the Great’s wife, the daughter of Oxyartes of Bactria. A later literary association is Daniel Defoe’s heroine Roxana; the two contexts belong to different periods of the name’s history.
Roxane through the years
- Babies since 1880
- 5,179
- 0 boys · 5,179 girls
- Most popular year
- 1956
- 308 babies
- 2025
- 6
- #14,591 for girls
- 2021–25 vs 2016–20
- −60%
- Cooling
By the numbers
In 2025, this name appeared in 6 U.S. birth records for girls, ranking No. 14,591 among girls’ names. The recent annual counts are too incomplete to establish a ten-year comparison. Its largest published annual count for girls was 308 in 1956. Published U.S. population figures for this spelling include 4,773 as a first name in 2020.
From Social Security birth records and U.S. Census name counts for this exact spelling. Other spellings are counted separately.
Roxane’s family of names
In English usage, Roxane has a diminutive in Roxy. In English usage, Roxane shares an earlier linguistic root with Luna. Roxane has a related form in Roxanne.
Inner ring: spellings · middle: nicknames and forms · outer: across languages.
Around the world
Roxane has relatives in 40 languages. Lines run from its Persian roots to each of them.
Persianwhere Roxane comes from · 1 name
Nicknames & forms 4
Diminutives, pet forms, short forms and variants used alongside the name.
Spellings & scripts 1
The same name written differently, including transliterations into other scripts.
Across languages 22
Equivalents and cognates in other languages, plus older forms it grew from.
See also 2
Names our sources mention alongside this one. They are related in story or meaning, not forms of this name.
People named Roxane
- Roxane GayAmerican writerborn 1974
- Roxane MesquidaFrench actressborn 1981
- Roxane DuranFrench actressborn 1993
- Roxane HaywardSouth African actressborn 1991
- Roxane FournierFrench bicycle racerborn 1991
- Roxane KnetemannDutch racing cyclistborn 1987
- Roxane VaisembergBrazilian tennis playerborn 1989
- Roxane van Iperenauthor of ‘The Sisters of Auschwitz’born 1976
- Roxanne VarzaAmerican, Iranian and French business womanborn 1985
Listed by how widely each person is written about, which says nothing about the name itself.
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