Tula rashi baby names

Questions parents ask about Tula

Which nakshatras come under Tula rashi?

Chitra (padas 3 and 4), Swati (all four padas) and Vishakha (padas 1, 2 and 3). A rashi spans 30° and a nakshatra 13°20′, so every rashi works out to two and a quarter nakshatras — nine padas in all.

Which letters should a Tula baby's name start with?

By the Avakahada chakra: Ra, Ri, Ru, Re, Ro, Taa, Tee, Too and Tay. All 9 belong to the rashi; the pada the child was actually born in narrows it to a single sound, and that comes from the birth chart, not from this list.

Is Tula rashi the same as Libra?

They name the same 30° of the zodiac, and Tula is normally translated as Libra. They are not interchangeable in practice. Rashi in the Indian tradition is the Moon's sign measured against the fixed stars (Lahiri ayanamsa); a Western sun sign is the Sun's position measured against the equinox. The two zodiacs currently sit about 24.2° apart, so a baby who is Libra by the newspaper column is very often not Tula rashi at all.

Does the name decide the rashi?

No — the birth chart does. The chakra runs the other way: a pandit reads the Moon's nakshatra and pada from the janam kundli and hands the family a syllable to start the name with. Read in reverse, as this page reads it, a syllable tells you which star the sound belongs to and nothing about your child.

Must the name follow the rashi syllable?

It is a tradition, not a rule. Plenty of families take the syllable as a shortlist and plenty choose the name they love regardless; both are ordinary. Where it does matter is the namkaran ceremony, which is why the sound usually comes from the pandit before the shortlist is drawn up.