Indira

Indira is a Sanskrit epithet of Lakshmi, the goddess of fortune and beauty, and the name of the rice-fields and river-rich villages she was thought to favor. It became a political word in the twentieth century when Indira Gandhi served as India's first and so far only woman prime minister, a figure whose decisions still shape the country's civic memory. Three measured syllables, in-DEE-ra, opening on a quick consonant and closing on an open vowel. Familiar across South Asia and the diaspora, striking and unusual in English-speaking countries, the name reads both classical and unmistakably modern.