From Persian tradition, Mithra is an ancient divinity of covenant and light; the name carries mythic Iranian heritage.
Mithra is among the oldest deity names still given to children, carrying a history that stretches back more than three thousand years to the pastoral communities of the ancient Indo-Iranian world. In the Avestan language of Zoroastrianism, Mithra (𐬨𐬌𐬚𐬭𐬀) is an angelic being — a yazata — associated with covenant, friendship, light, and the sun. The name derives from the Proto-Indo-Iranian root mitra meaning contract or binding agreement, which also produced the Sanskrit Mitra, one of the Adityas in the Rigveda, a solar deity who oversees truth and friendship between people and between humans and the divine.
As Zoroastrianism spread across the ancient Near East, Mithra's cult evolved and migrated. By the first centuries BCE and CE, a mystery religion centered on Mithras — the Romanized form — had spread across the entire Roman Empire, practiced especially among soldiers and merchants. Mithraic temples called mithraea were built from Britain to Mesopotamia.
The Roman cult emphasized initiation rites, shared sacred meals, and a cosmology involving the slaying of a bull, though the precise relationship between Roman Mithraism and its Iranian antecedents remains one of classical scholarship's most debated questions. Traces of Mithra's influence have been identified in medieval Christian iconography, Zoroastrian Nowruz traditions, and Persian poetry. As a personal name Mithra has been used continuously in Iran and among Zoroastrian communities in India (the Parsis) for centuries.
In the modern era it functions beautifully as a gender-neutral given name, its ancient pedigree worn lightly, its sound accessible to speakers of almost any language. To name a child Mithra is to invoke light, covenant, and one of humanity's earliest attempts to personify the reliable return of the sun.