Demon Names List: 60+ Names of Demons and Their Meanings

Quick answer: Demon names come from five main sources: the Hebrew Bible and New Testament (Satan, Beelzebub, Abaddon, Azazel), the Ars Goetia and other grimoires (Bael, Paimon, Astaroth and the rest of the 72), Mesopotamian texts (Pazuzu, Lamashtu), Islamic and Arabic tradition (Iblis, the ifrit, the ghul), and later European folklore and literature (Mephistopheles, Lucifuge). The table below lists more than sixty names with their origin and traditional role, so you can see where each one actually comes from.

Related guides: full list of the 72 demons of Solomon, what demonology is and how it developed, demon hierarchy and Goetia ranks, the main types of jinn, Pazuzu, the Mesopotamian wind demon, angels and demons compared.

Where do demon names come from?

Almost every demon name in circulation today can be traced to one of a handful of written traditions. The oldest are the Mesopotamian incantation texts, which name wind demons, disease demons and night spirits that had to be driven off with ritual. The Hebrew Bible contributed a small but influential set: the satan or adversary, Azazel of the wilderness, the lilith of Isaiah, and the sea monster Leviathan. Jewish writings of the Second Temple period and after expanded the cast, adding Asmodeus in the Book of Tobit, Mastema in Jubilees and Samael in the rabbinic and mystical literature.

The New Testament added Beelzebub as prince of demons, Legion from the Gospel of Mark, and Abaddon or Apollyon from Revelation. Church writers then personified vices and turned the old gods of Canaan and Phoenicia into devils, which is how Baal became Bael and Astarte became Astaroth. Islamic tradition brought a separate vocabulary for the jinn and their rebel leader Iblis. Finally the grimoires, above all the Ars Goetia, collected and ranked dozens of names, many of them garbled from earlier sources or newly coined. Our guide to what demonology is explains how these layers came to be stacked on top of each other.

Demon names in the Bible and Jewish tradition

The Hebrew Bible has fewer named demons than people expect. Satan is a title, “the adversary,” used of a heavenly prosecutor in Job and Zechariah before it became a proper name. Azazel appears in Leviticus 16 as the recipient of the scapegoat and was later understood as a fallen angel in the Book of Enoch. Lilith is named once, in Isaiah 34:14, among the creatures of a ruined land. Leviathan and Behemoth are primeval beasts rather than demons, though later tradition demonized the first. Molech, the god to whom children were said to be passed through fire, became a demon in medieval and modern imagination.

Jewish tradition between roughly 200 BCE and 600 CE developed these figures. Tobit introduces Asmodeus, the demon who kills Sarah’s seven husbands. The Testament of Solomon, a Greek text of the first to fifth centuries CE, names dozens of demons subdued by the king, including Ornias, Beelzeboul, Asmodeus and the female Obyzouth. The Talmud speaks of shedim and mazzikin as classes of harmful spirits. Later midrash and the Zohar made Samael the accuser and angel of death and paired him with Lilith. The New Testament’s contribution is small but decisive: Beelzebub, Legion, Belial (in 2 Corinthians 6:15) and Abaddon, the angel of the bottomless pit in Revelation 9:11.

Demon names from the Goetia and the grimoires

The single largest list of demon names in Western tradition is the Ars Goetia, the first book of the Lesser Key of Solomon, which catalogues seventy-two spirits with ranks of king, duke, prince, marquis, count or earl, knight and president. The list descends from Johann Weyer’s Pseudomonarchia Daemonum of 1577, which had sixty-nine names, and Weyer in turn drew on a lost manuscript. The names are a mixture: some are demoted gods (Bael, Astaroth, Amon), some are corrupted Hebrew or Greek words, and some, like Vassago or Dantalion, have no known origin at all.

Other grimoires supply further names. The Grand Grimoire introduces Lucifuge Rofocale as Lucifer’s prime minister, with Satanachia, Agaliarept, Fleurety, Sargatanas and Nebiros as the chiefs beneath him. The Book of Abramelin lists hundreds of servant spirits, most of them unique to that text. Binsfeld’s classification of 1589 assigned seven demons to the seven deadly sins: Lucifer for pride, Mammon for greed, Asmodeus for lust, Leviathan for envy, Beelzebub for gluttony, Satan for wrath and Belphegor for sloth. The full roster of the Goetia is set out in our list of the 72 demons of Solomon, and the ranks are explained in the page on demon hierarchy and Goetia ranks.

Mesopotamian, Islamic and folk demon names

Three further traditions contribute names that are often mixed into modern lists without much care about where they belong.

Mesopotamia

Sumerian and Akkadian texts name Pazuzu, a wind demon whose amulets were used to protect against Lamashtu, the demoness who threatened mothers and infants. The utukku, gallu and alu were classes of harmful spirit; Namtar was a minister of the underworld; the lilitu were night spirits whose name later fed into Lilith. Humbaba, the guardian of the cedar forest in Gilgamesh, is a monster rather than a demon but is often listed with them.

Islamic and Arabic tradition

Islamic texts speak of jinn, a separate category of created being who may be good or bad. Iblis is the rebel who refused to bow to Adam; shaitan is the term for any devil, jinn or human; the ifrit and marid are powerful jinn; the ghul is a desert shape-shifter; the qareen is a personal companion spirit. Regional folklore adds figures like Aisha Kandisha in Morocco. See our guide to the main types of jinn for the distinctions.

Persian, Indian and European folklore

Zoroastrian texts name Angra Mainyu or Ahriman as the destructive spirit and Aeshma as the demon of wrath, a probable source for Asmodeus. Persian epic has the div. Indian tradition has the rakshasa and Buddhist tradition the tempter Mara. European folklore contributes the incubus and succubus, the Slavic chort, the Germanic Krampus and the literary Mephistopheles of the Faust legend.

Demon names and their meanings: how reliable are the etymologies?

Lists of “demons and their meanings” tend to present every name as if its meaning were settled. In fact the reliability varies enormously. Some names have clear meanings: Abaddon is Hebrew for destruction, Apollyon is the Greek equivalent, Beelzebub is most likely “lord of the flies” (possibly a mocking distortion of Baal Zebul, “Baal the prince”), and Lucifer is Latin for light-bringer, a translation of the Hebrew “shining one” in Isaiah 14. Mammon is Aramaic for wealth and only became a demon when preachers personified it.

Others are disputed. Samael is explained as “poison of God” or “blind god,” and scholars do not agree. Asmodeus may come from the Persian Aeshma-daeva, “demon of wrath,” but the derivation is not certain. Azazel has been read as “God strengthens,” as “fierce god” and as a place name. Many Goetia names are simply opaque: nobody knows what Vassago, Gusion, Marchosias or Dantalion originally meant, and attempts to explain them are modern guesswork. When a source gives a confident meaning for one of these, treat it as a hypothesis rather than a fact. The table at the end of this article marks the uncertain cases.

Common misunderstandings about demonic names

A few errors appear in nearly every popular demon names list, and they are worth correcting.

• Jinn are not demons by definition. In Islamic teaching jinn are a species with free will; only the wicked ones are called shayatin. Listing “jinn” as a demon name confuses a category with an individual.
• Baphomet is not a historical demon. The name came from the Templar trials of the fourteenth century, probably as a corruption of Mahomet, and the goat image was drawn by Eliphas Levi in 1856.
• Most Goetia spirits are not evil in the text. They teach sciences, find treasure and reconcile friends. The word “demon” was applied to them by their Christian compilers.
• Lilith’s biblical presence is thin. One verse in Isaiah, and even that is debated. Her full story is medieval.
• Lucifer and Satan were not originally the same. Isaiah 14 describes a Babylonian king; the identification with Satan is a Christian reading from the early centuries CE.

Keeping these distinctions in mind makes the names far more interesting, because each one then points back to a specific text and a specific moment.

Why people search for demon names today

Searches for demon names are driven mostly by fiction, games and curiosity rather than by belief. Writers want names for characters; game designers want rosters; horror fans want to know whether the demon in a film has any basis in tradition. The name Valac became famous through The Conjuring films, Pazuzu through The Exorcist, and Paimon through Hereditary, each of which sent people to the Goetia or to Mesopotamian archaeology to find out more. Metal bands, comics and anime draw on the same lists.

A second group comes from religious interest. Readers of the Bible meet Beelzebub, Abaddon and Legion and want to know who they are; readers of the Quran want to understand the difference between Iblis, shaitan and jinn. A third group is academic: students of folklore, religious studies and the history of magic who need to know which name belongs to which text. This list is written for all three. It gives the source for every name, so that you can check it, and it avoids the invented meanings that clutter most online lists.

How to use and check a list of demon names

The most useful habit when reading any demon names list is to ask three questions about each entry. Which text first names this figure? What does that text actually say it does? And when did the later, more colorful details get attached? Pazuzu, for example, is on Assyrian amulets as a protective figure against Lamashtu; his role as a possessing spirit comes from a 1971 novel and its film. Astaroth is a Phoenician goddess, Astarte, demoted by biblical polemic and then given a Goetia entry that makes him a duke riding a dragon.

For the Goetia names, the three texts to compare are Weyer (1577), the Lemegeton in the Mathers and Crowley edition (1904), and de Plancy’s Dictionnaire Infernal (1818, illustrated 1863). For biblical names, a good study Bible and a dictionary of deities and demons will settle most questions. For Islamic names, the Quran itself and the classical commentaries are the starting point. The table below gives each name’s tradition and role in brief; the linked articles on this site go deeper on the figures that have their own pages. We describe these names as history and literature and provide no instructions of any kind.

Disclaimer

This list presents demon names as they appear in religious texts, grimoires and folklore, for educational and cultural reference only. The beliefs attached to them are described, not endorsed, and the site offers no ritual instructions or claims about any spirit.