Naming guide
What makes a great Arabic name
Arabic names are built from meaning. Almost every given name is an ordinary Arabic word: Karim means generous, Amal means hope, Layla means night, Badr is the full moon and Asad is a lion. Other names honor prophets shared with Jewish and Christian tradition, such as Ibrahim (Abraham), Yusuf (Joseph), Maryam (Mary) and Musa (Moses). Names built on the 99 names of God always take Abd, servant: Abdullah is servant of God, Abd al-Rahman servant of the Most Merciful, Abd al-Karim servant of the Most Generous.
Most names grow from three-consonant roots, and one root can produce a whole family of names. The root k-r-m, generosity, gives Karim, Karima, Akram, Ikram and Karam. The root h-m-d, praise, gives Muhammad, Ahmad, Mahmud, Hamid and Hamida. Feminine names often add -a: Amir and Amira, Nabil and Nabila, Jamil and Jamila. Some classic women's names have no -a at all, like Zaynab, Maryam and Hind, and Nour and Shams are given to both girls and boys.
The classical Arabic name is a chain of up to five parts:
- Ism: the personal name, such as Yusuf or Fatima
- Kunya: Abu (father of) or Umm (mother of) plus a child's name, usually the eldest son, such as Abu Khalid or Umm Layla, a warm and respectful way to address an adult
- Nasab: the lineage, using ibn or bin (son of) and bint (daughter of), as in Yusuf ibn Harun ibn Sa'id
- Laqab: an honorific or descriptive title, such as al-Rashid (the rightly guided) or Salah al-Din (righteousness of the faith), the name Europeans shortened to Saladin
- Nisba: an adjective of origin ending in -i, such as al-Baghdadi or al-Khwarizmi (from Khwarazm), whose Latinized name gave English the word algorithm; women take the feminine ending -iyya
Today most Arab countries record a given name, the father's name, often the grandfather's, and a family name, so Omar Khalid Haddad is Omar, son of Khalid, of the Haddad family. Family names come from old trades (Haddad, blacksmith; Najjar, carpenter; Khayyat, tailor; Attar, perfumer), from places (Halabi, from Aleppo; Masri, Egyptian), or from tribes, which in the Gulf usually take Al-, as in Al-Kaabi or Al-Shamsi. In Morocco, Algeria and Tunisia, French-era records produced spellings like Mohamed, Youssef and Rachid, and many family names begin with Ben or Bel, son of.
Arabic name ideas
Arabic boy names
- Khalid: eternal, enduring
- Tariq: the night visitor, also a bright star; Gibraltar comes from Jabal Tariq, Tariq's mountain
- Faris: knight or horseman
- Suhail: Canopus, the bright southern star
- Layth: lion
- Rami: archer
- Haytham: young eagle
- Zayd: growth and abundance
Arabic girl names
- Layla: night
- Amal: hope
- Nour: light, also used for boys
- Reem: white gazelle
- Hala: the halo around the moon
- Lujain: silver
- Taghreed: birdsong
- Yasmin: jasmine, borrowed from Persian
Arabic last names
- Haddad: blacksmith, common across the Levant
- Najjar: carpenter
- Khoury: priest, a common name among Arab Christians
- Halabi: from Aleppo
- Darwish: dervish, a Sufi mystic
- Nakhleh: palm tree
- Al-Kaabi: an Emirati tribal name
- Bennani: an old family name of Fes, Morocco
Classical Arabic full names
- Abu Tariq Yusuf ibn Harun al-Basri: a Basra merchant known by his son's name
- Umm Salim Zaynab bint Rashid: a respected matriarch
- Qasim ibn Sa'id al-Dimashqi: a scholar from Damascus
- Hind bint Amr al-Kufiyya: a poet from Kufa
- Jamal al-Din Mahmud al-Halabi: an Aleppo judge, laqab first
- Ruqayya bint Sahl al-Andalusiyya: a physician from al-Andalus
How to create your own Arabic name
- Start from a meaning, then use its root. Choose the quality you want and build from the root family: patience, s-b-r, gives Sabir, Sabira and Sabri; light, n-w-r, gives Nur, Munir, Anwar and Nura; victory, n-s-r, gives Nasir, Nasr and Mansur.
- Build the chain for historical settings. Give a character an ism, a nasab of one or two generations and a nisba for their city. Add a kunya when they become a parent and a laqab once they earn a reputation, so plain Hasan grows into Abu Ali Hasan ibn Khalid al-Basri.
- Use al-Din titles for medieval officials and nobles. Nur al-Din (light of the faith), Izz al-Din (glory of the faith), Shams al-Din (sun of the faith) and Badr al-Din (full moon of the faith) were widespread honorifics in the medieval period.
- Choose family names by region. Levantine families often carry trade names like Sabbagh (dyer), Gulf families tribal Al- names like Al-Ghamdi, Egyptian families frequently use an ancestor's given name such as Soliman or Farouk, and Maghrebi families favor Ben and Bel names or place names like El Fassi, from Fes.
- Include Arab Christian names. Christian communities use Arabic forms of biblical names, such as Boutros (Peter), Hanna (John), Girgis (George) and Elias, Maronite families favor Charbel, and Coptic Egyptians use names like Mina and Bishoy.
Tips for using Arabic names in your game or story
Pick one transliteration and keep it. Muhammad, Mohammed and Mohamed are the same name, as are Husayn and Hussein. A character from Cairo might be Gamal, because Egyptian Arabic pronounces the letter jim as a hard g, while the same name in Beirut is Jamal. Use the spelling that matches the character's home.
Mind the sun letters. Before certain consonants the l in al- blends into the next sound, so al-Rashid is said ar-Rashid and al-Shams is said ash-Shams. That is why Abd al-Rahman is often written Abdulrahman or Abdur-Rahman, and Nur al-Din appears as Nureddin.
Do not cut Abd names in half. Abdul on its own means servant of the, so call Abd al-Karim by his full name, by Karim among close friends, or by his kunya.
Learn the key sounds. Kh, as in Khalid, is like the ch in Scottish loch. Gh, as in Ghada, is close to a French r. Q, as in Qasim, is a k made deep in the throat. An apostrophe in Sa'id or Ja'far marks the ayn, a tight throat sound, and doubled letters are held longer, so Hasan and Hassan are different names.
Treat religious names with care. Names of the Prophet's family and companions, such as Muhammad, Fatima, Ali, Hasan and Husayn, carry deep meaning for many readers, so think twice before giving them to a comic villain.