Babar, also variously spelled as Baber, Babur, and Babor is a male given name of Pashto, and Persian origin, and a popular male given name in Pakistan. It is generally taken in reference to the Persian babr (Persian: ببر ), meaning "tiger". There is a similar name in connotation to the Arabic male given form and generic name of the animal by the name "Nimr" (Arabic: نَمِر namir) which means "yellow-black stripped cat", i.e. "tiger". The word repeatedly appears in Ferdowsi's Shahnameh and was borrowed into the Turkic languages of Central Asia. Thackston argues for an alternate derivation from the PIE word "beaver", pointing to similarities between the pronunciation Bābor and the Russian bobr (бобр, "beaver"). The most famous bearer of this name was Zahiruddin Muhammad Babur, known popularly as Babur, a prince of the Timurid dynasty who founded the Mughal Empire, and the name is popular in Bahrain, Afghanistan, as well as Muslim communities in South and Central Asia.

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