Amir in Arabic: How to Write أمير, and What It Means

Amir in Arabic is أمير, pronounced Amīr. Amir is an Arabic name, so it has a fixed Arabic spelling. It has four letters: alif with hamza above, mīm, yāʾ and rāʾ. With its vowel marks it is أَمِير. The name means prince, commander.

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

Amir in Arabic calligraphy: أمير in three styles

Three renders of أمير, in Amiri, Lemonada and Alkalami, drawn straight from the font files.

How أمير is spelled, letter by letter

أمير has four letters, read from right to left, starting with the letter أ, alif with hamza above. One letter, أ alif with hamza above, never joins the letter after it, so أمير always shows one small gap. Arabic writes only long vowels as letters. The two short vowels are marks that everyday spelling leaves out; أَمِير shows them.

What does Amir mean?

Amir means prince, commander, from the Arabic root ء م ر. That is the meaning our list of Arabic boy names with their meanings gives, from the sources named there.

Behind the Name gives commander, prince, and notes that the word was a title before it was a name; English borrowed it as emir. Add the feminine ending ة and the same word becomes the girls' name Amira, أميرة, princess.

Amir and Ameer: English spellings of أمير

Arabic has one spelling, أمير; English has several. Amir was one of the 100 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, and Ameer are in the US top 1,000 for 2024 as well. They are all one Arabic name. Amir starts with alif carrying a hamza, أ, which marks the short a at the start of the word. The long ī in the middle is the letter yāʾ, ي; Ameer spells that long vowel with ee.

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

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

The American basketball player Amir Johnson is أمير جونسون, in the Arabic spelling of the name.

Two related names on this site are Malik in Arabic, مالك and Kareem in Arabic, كريم. For Arabic names to choose from, browse the Arabic boy names with their meanings, part of our Arabic vocabulary lists.

Write أمير in more fonts and download it

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

Frequently asked questions

Keep learning Arabic

• Up one levelYour Name in Arabic Script, With Checked SpellingsType your name and see it in Arabic script. 212 common English names are checked against Arabic Wikipedia; any other name gets a clearly marked estimate.
• In this topicAmira in Arabic: How to Write أميرة, and What It MeansAmira in Arabic is أميرة (Amīra), an Arabic name that means princess. Copy it with or without vowels, hear it, and save it in three calligraphy styles.
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