Roxanne is the French and English form of Roxana, the name of the Bactrian princess who married Alexander the Great; it comes from the Persian Roshanak and means "bright" or "dawn". The name was kept alive by the heroine of Cyrano de Bergerac and, for a later generation, by the 1978 song Roxanne by the Police. Roxanne stood at number 951 in 2000, left the top 1000 soon after and ranks number 1315 in 2025.