Ali in Arabic: How to Write علي, and What It Means

Ali in Arabic is علي, pronounced ʿAlī. Ali is an Arabic name, so it has a fixed Arabic spelling. It has three letters: ʿayn, lām and yāʾ. With its vowel marks it is عَلِيّ. The name means high, exalted.

Copy the spelling you need from the table. The cells hold the plain letters of علي with no hidden direction marks, and the Listen button reads ʿAlī in your device's Arabic voice, if it has one.

Ali in Arabic calligraphy: علي in three styles

Three renders of علي, in Amiri, Reem Kufi and Rakkas, drawn straight from the font files.

How علي is spelled, letter by letter

علي has three letters, read from right to left, starting with the letter ع, ʿayn. Every letter of علي joins the one after it, so the name is one unbroken shape. Arabic writes only long vowels as letters. The two short vowels, and the shadda that doubles a consonant, are marks that everyday spelling leaves out; عَلِيّ shows them.

What does Ali mean?

Ali means high, exalted, from the Arabic root ع ل ي. That is the meaning our Arabic name generator gives it, and the list of Arabic boy names with their meanings repeats it with its sources.

Behind the Name gives lofty, sublime, from the root of ʿalā, to be high. ʿAlī ibn Abī Ṭālib, cousin and son-in-law of the Prophet Muhammad, was the fourth caliph, and the boxer Muhammad Ali took the name when he converted to Islam.

Ali in Latin letters and in Arabic

Ali was one of the 500 most common names given to boys born in the US in 2024, in the Social Security Administration's 2024 national file, as copied in the usbabynames data package. Whatever Latin spelling you start from, the Arabic is علي. The vowelled form ends in yāʾ with a shadda, عَلِيّ; transliteration writes that ending as a long ī, ʿAlī, and everyday spelling leaves the marks out.

Do not build Ali from its English sound. A sound-by-sound converter turns it into آلي, letter by letter aa, l, ee, and that is what the rule engine of our own name tool gives, marked as an estimate. Arabic already has this name, so copy علي.

The titles Arabic Wikipedia gives people called Ali show how Arabic writers handle the name:

Muhammad Ali is محمد علي, but the American footballer Ali Krieger, whose Ali is short for Alexandra, has the title آلي كرايغر: Arabic Wikipedia spells her English name by its sound.

Two related names on this site are Omar in Arabic, عمر and Muhammad in Arabic, محمد. For Arabic names to choose from, browse the Arabic boy names with their meanings, part of our Arabic vocabulary lists.

Write علي in more fonts and download it

Paste علي into the box below, or into our Arabic calligraphy generator, to draw it in 12 more fonts and save it as a PNG.

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