Variant of Selene, the Greek goddess of the moon, from 'selas' meaning 'light.'
Seline is a graceful variant of Selene, the name of the ancient Greek goddess who personified the moon itself — not merely its light, but its full celestial presence. Where Artemis was associated with the hunt and the crescent, Selene *was* the moon, driving her silver chariot across the night sky. The name derives from the Greek *selas*, meaning 'light' or 'brightness,' and the goddess was so fundamental to Greek cosmology that her worship predates the Olympian pantheon.
Her myth is perhaps most evocatively told in the story of her love for the shepherd Endymion, whom she visited nightly as he slept eternally in a cave on Mount Latmos — one of antiquity's most hauntingly beautiful love stories. The Latin adaptation *Luna* became the dominant moon-name in the Roman world, but Selene and its variants persisted in Eastern Mediterranean cultures and reemerged strongly in the Ottoman and Balkan naming traditions, where the softened form Seline took root. In Turkey and surrounding regions, Seline remains a genuinely popular feminine name, carrying both its lunar symbolism and a sense of quiet, luminous beauty.
The name also appears, in variant spellings, across French and Italian naming traditions influenced by neoclassical fashion. In the contemporary naming landscape, Seline benefits from the same celestial-name revival that has boosted Luna to the top of global charts, while remaining far rarer and more distinctive. It has a silvery, unhurried sound — three syllables that feel like moonlight moving across water — and carries centuries of mythological weight with an ease that never feels heavy.