A variant of Caspian, the place name tied to the Caspian Sea and its ancient region.
Caspien is a romanticized orthographic variant of Caspian, a name derived from the ancient Caspi — a people attested by Strabo and other classical geographers who inhabited the southwestern shores of the world's largest inland sea, now known as the Caspian Sea. The sea itself may take its name from the city of Qazvin in Iran, or from the Caspi people directly, with the exact etymology disputed by scholars of ancient Caucasian history. The name therefore carries the deep time of the ancient Near East, connecting it to civilizations that predate Rome and Greece as organizing political forces.
S. Lewis, who gave it to the rightful heir of Narnia in *Prince Caspian* (1951), the second of the Chronicles. Lewis's Caspian is a figure of romantic chivalry — young, exiled, idealistic, eventually crowned — and the name absorbed those qualities so thoroughly that it is now almost impossible to hear without some echo of Narnian adventure.
Lewis likely chose it for the sea's exotic grandeur, its consonantal strength, and its plausible medieval European sound. The spelling Caspien softens the final syllable, giving the name a slightly more lyrical, Continental quality that recalls names like Julien, Bastien, or Damien. This makes it feel at home in both English and French-speaking contexts, a useful ambiguity for families with multilingual households or international sensibilities. The name has climbed steadily in the English-speaking world since the 2000s, buoyed by the Narnia film adaptations and a broader cultural appetite for names that feel literary and adventurous without being archaic.