Arabic Boy Names: 166 Male Names With Their Meanings

Arabic Vocabulary Lists > Arabic Boy Names

Many Arabic boy names are the names of prophets, such as Ibrahim and Yusuf, or words for a quality: Karim means generous, Khalid immortal and Salim safe. The finder below lists 166 Arabic male names in vowelled Arabic script, each with its meaning, its root, the Quran verse where it appears, and a link to the source we checked.

Search by spelling or by meaning, such as lion or star, or filter by theme, origin, first letter and length. The 106 boy names our Arabic name generator can draw are all here, with the same spelling and meaning, and the generator builds a full classical name with ibn and Abu if you want one picked for you.

ʿAbd names: servant of God

An ʿAbd name joins عَبْد (ʿabd, servant) to Allah or to one of the names of God: عَبْد اللّٰه (ʿAbdullah) is servant of God, and عَبْد الْكَرِيم (ʿAbd al-Karim) is servant of the Most Generous. Wikipedia's article on Arabic names describes it as a common form among Arab Muslims, and notes that ʿabd is usually not joined to the name of a prophet. Arab Christians use the form too: the same article notes that عبد المسيح (ʿAbd al-Masih), servant of Christ, is a common Christian family name in the Arab countries.

The second half of every ʿAbd name below is on our list of the 99 names of Allah, with meanings and roots, except Allah itself, and the last column gives its number there.

Two spellings of the same article sit side by side in this table. This page writes al- as it is spelled, ʿAbd al-Rahman, as the generator does. The 99 names list writes the sound you hear, Ar-Rahman, because the l of al- turns into the next letter when that letter is a sun letter such as ر. So ʿAbd al-Rahman is said ʿabd ar-rahman, and our page on sun and moon letters lists the fourteen letters that do this. In English the same names are often spelled with Abdel- or Abdul-, as in Abdelaziz or Abdulaziz.

Boy names from the Quran

Wikipedia's article on prophets and messengers in Islam counts 25 prophets named in the Quran, from Adam to Muhammad. Of those, 21 are in this table, and most have an English form from the Bible: Ibrahim is Abraham, Yusuf is Joseph and Nuh is Noah. We checked each name against the verse on Quran.com, and the verse numbers link there. Wiktionary traces most of these names to Hebrew, Aramaic, Syriac or Greek, and the finder's origin column shows which.

Ahmad in 61:6 is a name the Quran gives the Prophet Muhammad, in a verse where ʿIsa speaks of a messenger to come after him, as Wikipedia's article on the names of Muhammad notes. Two more names in the list come from the Quran without being anyone's name: Yasin and Taha are the letters that open Suras 36 and 20.

How a full Arabic name is built around the first name

A boy's first name, the ism, is only one part of a classical Arabic name. The nasab follows it with ibn, son of, and the father's name; the kunya puts Abu, father of, before the name of a child; the nisba after it names a place or a tribe; and a laqab is a title or nickname. Our guide to Arabic last names takes these five parts apart in the full name of the historian Ibn Khaldun, and the name generator builds one for you, such as Abu Hasan Yusuf ibn Khalid ibn ʿUmar al-Halabi.

Most Arab countries no longer write ibn in official names. A man's name today is usually his own name, his father's name and a family name, so Yusuf ibn Khalid becomes Yusuf Khalid. That is also how many Arabic family names began: an ancestor's first name stayed with everyone after him. For the words for son, father and the rest of the family, see our list of Arabic family words.

Notes on spelling and on the list

Some names are written with a letter that is not said. عَمْرو (ʿAmr) ends in a و that is not pronounced, which keeps it apart from عُمَر (ʿUmar) when the vowel marks are left out, as Wikipedia's article on the name Amr explains. Two names share the Latin spelling Amir: عَامِر (ʿAmir, flourishing) starts with ʿayn, and أَمِير (Amir, prince) starts with alif. The Arabic column tells them apart. Only two boy names in the list end in ة, the ending most girls' names have: Hamza and Usama.

Every name is here because Wiktionary or Behind the Name lists it as an Arabic boy's name and gives it a meaning, and the source column links what we used. Bilal, Zayd and Ziyad are not in the generator, because neither Wiktionary nor Wikipedia gives a meaning for them; they are in this list with the meaning Behind the Name gives. Hilal is the one name in the list also given to girls, and the meanings of Idris and Luqman are marked as unknown or uncertain because their sources say so.

Writing a boy's name in Arabic

Copy the name from the Arabic column: the first form carries its vowel marks, the second is the plain spelling you see in print. Arabic letters join, and six of them, ا د ذ ر ز و, never join the letter after them, so مُحَمَّد (Muhammad) is joined all the way through while دَاوُد (Dawud) is four separate letters. Our guide to how the letters of a name join in Arabic handwriting shows each step, and the list of Arabic girl names and meanings works the same way as this one. For an English name, such as Michael, our converter for writing your name in Arabic spells it by sound.

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