From the Latin word for midday, later used for the geographic term meridian.
Meridian descends from the Latin meridianus, an adjective meaning "of midday" or "of the south," itself derived from meridies (noon, south), formed from medius (middle) and dies (day). In geography and astronomy, a meridian is the imaginary line running from pole to pole, the axis by which longitude is measured — a concept that made the word synonymous with precision, orientation, and the point from which all else is reckoned. Historically, the Prime Meridian at Greenwich became the zero-line of the modern world's geographic imagination, giving the word an outsized symbolic weight.
As a given name, Meridian is rare and largely contemporary, part of a broader movement of parents toward word-names drawn from geography, astronomy, and nature. It shares company with names like Solstice, Equinox, and Zenith — each reaching for the vocabulary of celestial navigation and natural cycles. Alice Walker gave the name prominent literary exposure with her 1976 novel Meridian, a powerful work about a young Black woman's journey through the civil rights movement; the name in that context carries themes of moral reckoning and the search for one's true coordinates in the world.
Meridian works exceptionally well as a name because it satisfies multiple contemporary tastes at once: it is feminine-leaning but genuinely gender-neutral, evocative without being fantastical, and classical in its Latin roots while feeling thoroughly modern. The nickname options — Meri, Rian, Dian — give it everyday flexibility. Parents who choose it often cite a love of maps, astronomy, or simply the idea that their child will be a kind of fixed point, a reference from which others take their bearings.