Eve in Arabic: حواء, إيف, and Which One to Use

Eve in Arabic is حواء (Ḥawwāʾ), the first woman, for Muslims and Arab Christians alike. The Quran tells her story without naming her; her name comes from the hadith. For an English speaker named Eve, Arabic spells the sound: إيف, as Arabic Wikipedia does for the writer Ève Curie.

Copy the form you need. The Listen button reads each spelling in your device's Arabic voice, if it has one, so you can hear how حواء and إيف differ.

Eve in Arabic calligraphy: حواء in three styles

Three renders of حواء, in Amiri, Katibeh and Aref Ruqaa, drawn straight from the font files.

حواء or إيف: which spelling should you use?

Use حواء for the name itself: it is the title of Arabic Wikipedia's article on Eve and of its article on Eve in Islam. The Quran speaks of Adam's wife in verses such as Quran 2:35 but never names her, and Wikipedia's article on Eve in Islam notes that her name appears only in the hadith. Use إيف for an English speaker: all three in the table further down have it.

How Arabic Wikipedia writes people called Eve

For the first woman, Arabic Wikipedia uses the Arabic form. For the three modern people called Eve in the table below, its titles write إيف three times. Eve is not in the table of our name tool, and its sound rules give إيف.

How حواء is spelled, letter by letter

حواء has four letters, read from right to left, starting with the letter ح, ḥāʾ. و wāw and ا alif never join the letter after them, so حواء always shows two small gaps. 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; حَوَّاء shows them.

What does Eve mean?

Eve comes from the Hebrew Ḥawwa, which Behind the Name links to ḥawa, to breathe, or ḥaya, to live. حواء keeps the breathy ḥ and the doubled w of the Hebrew, and ends in a hamza, ء. Ava, a name in the US top ten, began as a variant of Eve: see Ava in Arabic. Her husband is Adam in Arabic, آدم. Eve was one of the 1,000 most common names given to girls born in the US in 2024, in the Social Security Administration's 2024 national file, as copied in the usbabynames data package.

Two related names on this site are Adam in Arabic, آدم and Hannah in Arabic, حنة. For Arabic names to choose from, browse the Arabic girl names with their meanings, part of our Arabic vocabulary lists.

Write حواء in more fonts and download it

Paste حواء 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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