Khalil in Arabic: How to Write خليل, and What It Means

Khalil in Arabic is خليل, pronounced Khalīl. Khalil is an Arabic name, so it has a fixed Arabic spelling. It has four letters: khāʾ, lām, yāʾ and lām. With its vowel marks it is خَلِيل. The name means close friend.

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

Khalil in Arabic calligraphy: خليل in three styles

Three renders of خليل, in Amiri, Katibeh and Alkalami, drawn straight from the font files.

How خليل is spelled, letter by letter

خليل has four letters, read from right to left, starting with the letter خ, khāʾ. Every letter of خليل joins the one after it, so the name is one unbroken shape. Arabic writes only long vowels as letters. The two short vowels are marks that everyday spelling leaves out; خَلِيل shows them.

What does Khalil mean?

Khalil means close friend, from the Arabic root خ ل ل. 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 friend, and Wiktionary gives a close friend for خَلِيل. In Islam the prophet Ibrāhīm, Abraham, carries the title Khalīl Allāh, friend of God: see Abraham in Arabic, إبراهيم.

Khalil in Latin letters and in Arabic

Khalil 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 خليل. Khalil starts with khāʾ, خ, the rasping sound at the back of the mouth that English writes kh. A sound-by-sound converter reads kh as two letters, k and h, and gets the name wrong.

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

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

The American football player Khalil Mack is خليل ماك: the Arabic spelling of the name.

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

Write خليل in more fonts and download it

Paste خليل 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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• 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.
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