Muslim boys' names: 54 Islamic names with meanings

Choosing a name in a Muslim family

A name is the first gift and, in Islamic tradition, one of a parent's obligations — the Prophet is reported to have instructed that children be given good names, and meaning is the reason. That is why almost every name on this page is a word before it is a name: a quality, a virtue, or a description of something admired.

Naming usually happens at the aqiqah, traditionally on the seventh day after birth, along with the shaving of the head and the sacrifice where families observe it. Some families name on the day of birth instead, and both are widely practised in India.

Two conventions worth knowing. Names formed with Abd ("servant of") are joined to one of the names of God — Abdullah, Abdul Rahman — and the Abd is not dropped, since the name means servant of that attribute rather than the attribute itself. And names shared with prophets and with the family of the Prophet carry particular weight for many families.

About this list

54 names, each drawn from our verified name corpus with the meaning recorded there. This is not a scraped list of a thousand names with invented glosses — it is the set we can actually stand behind, cross-checked against United States birth-registration data for the spellings families register.

Indian Muslim naming draws on Arabic, Persian, Turkish and Urdu, and spellings in the Latin alphabet vary widely — Ayesha, Aisha and Aaisha are one name. Choose the spelling you want on the documents before you register the birth, because that is the one every later record has to match.

We are building this corpus out. If you know a name we are missing, or believe a meaning here is wrong, tell us — corrections are worth more to us than length.

Muslim boys' names with meanings (1-40)

Each name with the meaning our corpus records for it, and the Devanagari spelling used on Indian documents.

Muslim boys' names with meanings (41-54)

The names families are registering now

These are the names on this page that appear in United States birth registrations for 2025 — the one large public dataset we can check spellings against. India has no equivalent public register, so any ranking of Indian name popularity is an estimate.

Choosing between them

Say the shortlist aloud with the family name, the way a teacher would read a register and the way a grandparent would call across a courtyard. Both matter, and a name that survives both is the one to keep.

Check the meaning in a source you trust rather than a baby-name website — meanings drift and get copied wrong. If a name matters to you religiously, it is worth asking someone qualified rather than relying on any list, including ours.

Fix the spelling before the birth registration. Romanised Arabic and Urdu names have several accepted spellings, and school records, passports and Aadhaar all have to match the certificate.

And think about the short form the school will actually use, and the initials. A name is spoken far more often than it is written.

Frequently asked questions

Q: How many names are on this page? — 54, each with a meaning we can verify. We would rather publish that number than claim a larger one we cannot support.

Q: When should a Muslim baby be named? — Commonly at the aqiqah on the seventh day, though naming on the day of birth is also widely practised. Families differ, and both are accepted.

Q: What is the rule about names beginning with Abd? — Abd means servant, and it is joined to a name of God — Abdullah, Abdul Qadir. The Abd is not dropped in use, because the name without it would be an attribute of God rather than a person's name.

Q: Can a Muslim child be given a name that is not Arabic? — Yes. Indian Muslim families use Persian, Turkish and Urdu names widely, and what matters in the tradition is that the meaning is good rather than the language it comes from.