Fatima in Arabic: How to Write فاطمة, and What It Means

Fatima in Arabic is فاطمة, pronounced Fāṭima. Fatima is an Arabic name, so it has a fixed Arabic spelling. It has five letters: fāʾ, alif, ṭāʾ, mīm and tāʾ marbūṭa. With its vowel marks it is فَاطِمَة. The name means one who abstains, one who separates.

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

Fatima in Arabic calligraphy: فاطمة in three styles

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

How فاطمة is spelled, letter by letter

فاطمة has five letters, read from right to left, starting with the letter ف, fāʾ. One letter, ا alif, never joins the letter after it, so فاطمة always shows one small gap. Arabic writes only long vowels as letters. The three short vowels are marks that everyday spelling leaves out; فَاطِمَة shows them.

What does Fatima mean?

Fatima means one who abstains, one who separates, from the Arabic root ف ط م. That is the meaning our Arabic name generator gives it, and the list of Arabic girl names with their meanings repeats it with its sources.

Behind the Name derives it from the verb فطم, faṭama, to abstain or to wean. Fāṭima was a daughter of the Prophet Muhammad and the wife of ʿAlī, the fourth caliph, and is regarded as the exemplary Muslim woman, especially by Shia Muslims.

Fatima in Latin letters and in Arabic

Fatima was one of the 500 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. Whatever Latin spelling you start from, the Arabic is فاطمة. The t of Fatima is the heavy letter ṭāʾ, ط, not the plain tāʾ, ت, and a sound-by-sound spelling picks the wrong one. Fatimah, with an h for the final ة, is listed by Behind the Name as a variant.

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

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

The British javelin thrower Fatima Whitbread is فاطمة ويتبريد: the Arabic spelling of her first name.

Two related names on this site are Aisha in Arabic, عائشة and Amira in Arabic, أميرة. For Arabic names to choose from, browse the Arabic girl names with their meanings, part of our Arabic vocabulary lists.

Write فاطمة in more fonts and download it

Paste فاطمة 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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