Though ancient Mesopotamian in origin, as a modern category fit it is best treated here as a Near Eastern goddess name tied to love and war.
Inanna is one of the oldest recorded personal names in human history, belonging to the supreme goddess of ancient Sumer — deity of love, war, beauty, justice, and political power. Her name is thought to derive from the Sumerian *Nin-anna*, meaning "Queen of Heaven," and cuneiform tablets inscribed with her praises date to at least 3500 BCE. The *Hymns to Inanna* composed by Enheduanna, a priestess and the world's first named author, make Inanna the subject of the earliest surviving body of attributed literature, a staggering distinction that places her at the very origin of the written word.
Her mythology is among the most psychologically rich in the ancient world. The *Descent of Inanna* recounts her journey into the underworld, where she is stripped of her divine regalia at each of seven gates and eventually killed, only to be resurrected — a narrative that scholars see as a prototype for later descent myths including those of Persephone and Orpheus. Her dual nature as both a tender goddess of love and a ferocious goddess of warfare made her a figure of terrifying wholeness, and her stories were studied in scribal schools across Mesopotamia for centuries.
As a living given name, Inanna largely disappeared with the fall of Sumerian civilization, preserved only in clay. Its modern revival is driven by scholars, spiritual practitioners drawn to pre-patriarchal goddess traditions, and parents who want a name that is genuinely ancient without being worn smooth by overuse. To name a daughter Inanna is to reach back past Greece and Rome to the first cities of humanity, invoking a figure of cosmic authority at the very dawn of recorded thought.
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