Marjan

Marjan is the Persian word for coral, the red branching treasure dredged from warm seas and strung into necklaces from Isfahan bazaars to Balkan villages. The name travels widely on that image, showing up across Iran, Afghanistan, the Caucasus, and the former Yugoslavia, where Slovenian and Macedonian speakers adopted it as a masculine variant. Pronounced mar-JAHN in Persian, with a soft j, the two syllables close with a subtle bell tone. It is unisex in practice, leaning feminine in the Middle East and masculine in parts of the Balkans. A small, jewel-bright name that makes almost no noise entering a room.