Entry № 7601 · Arabic origin

Nour Nour — Meaning, Origin & Baby Name Popularity

/ NOOR /
Gender
Girl
Origin
Arabic
Meaning
"Light, radiance"
Syllables
1
First recorded
7th c. CE

A name that means "light, radiance".

Used for both girls and boys across the Arab world, Nour is also common as a compound element — Nour al-Din ("light of the faith"), Nour al-Huda ("light of guidance"). In the West, the single-syllable form has caught on quickly: Nour entered the U.S. top 1000 only recently and is currently among the fastest-rising names in the country.

The appeal is the brevity, the universally recognised meaning, and the way it crosses cultural lines without losing its identity. A name that travels well.

One syllable. One meaning. Light.

The name in its native script.

نور
Transliteration
Nūr
Pronunciation
/ nuːr /
Root
Grammatical form

Where Nour stands.

Nour does not currently appear in the US Social Security Administration's top 1,000 girls' names, so we don't publish a US rank or birth count for it. That says nothing about the name's standing elsewhere in the world — only that it sits outside the ranked US data we rely on.

Nours before her.

Real people
Queen Noor of Jordan
American-born queen consort of King Hussein of Jordan. Born Lisa Halaby; took the name Noor ("light of Hussein") on her marriage.
born 1951
Noor Inayat Khan
British-Indian SOE agent during World War II. Posthumously awarded the George Cross.
1914 – 1944
In fiction
Nour Hamad
Central character in the novel The Map of Salt and Stars by Zeyn Joukhadar.
2018 novel

Names connected to Nour.

The number behind Nour.

5

The Seeker

In Pythagorean numerology the letters of Nour reduce to 5, The Seeker. This is a traditional interpretive system, not a factual claim about the name.