Toru is from the Bengali toru (তরু — tree, sapling). A modern American baby name in the broader Bengali-Indian literary heritage aesthetic. Toru Dutt (1856-1877) was an Indian Bengali poet and translator — widely considered the foundational figure of 19th-century Indian English literature and one of the foundational figures of the Indian English literary tradition alongside Henry Louis Vivian Derozio. Daughter of Bengali Christian convert Govin Chunder Dutt and niece of Romesh Chunder Dutt. Educated in Bombay, Calcutta, France, and England (Cambridge Higher Lectures for Women, 1872). Fluent in Bengali, English, French, and Sanskrit. Her foundational works include A Sheaf Gleaned in French Fields (1876) — translations of 165 French Romantic poems — widely considered one of the foundational works of Indian English translation, Bianca, or the Young Spanish Maiden (posthumous, 1878) — the foundational early Indian novel in English, and the foundational posthumous Ancient Ballads and Legends of Hindustan (1882) — English-language renditions of Sanskrit-Hindu mythological narratives, widely studied as a foundational work of Indian English poetry. Died of tuberculosis at age 21. Her foundational legacy as a multilingual Indian woman writer in the 19th century is widely studied in Indian English literary scholarship.
Featured throughout Bengali heritage and Indian English literature.
Toru does not currently appear in the US Social Security Administration's top 1,000 girls' names, so we don't publish a US rank or birth count for it. That says nothing about the name's standing elsewhere in the world — only that it sits outside the ranked US data we rely on.
In Pythagorean numerology the letters of Toru reduce to 2, The Peacemaker. This is a traditional interpretive system, not a factual claim about the name.