Islamic girls’ names
Names used in Muslim families worldwide. The core is Arabic, but the tradition travelled: Persian, Turkish, Urdu, Malay and Swahili all shaped it, and this list reflects that.
The core of Muslim naming is Arabic, and it reaches four unrelated language families.
Turkish, Persian, Urdu, Malay, Indonesian, Swahili, Hausa, Bosnian and Albanian all draw on the same Arabic religious vocabulary while belonging to entirely separate linguistic stocks. Noor, light, is used from Morocco to Malaysia. That distribution has nothing to do with descent and everything to do with the spread of a faith — the point set out in more detail on the Atlas light page.
The largest single source is the family and household of the Prophet: Khadija, Fatima, Aisha, Zainab, Ruqayya, Umm Kulthum, Hafsa, Juwayriya, Safiyya, Maymuna. These have been in continuous use for fourteen centuries and are among the most widely borne names on earth.
A second stream comes from the divine attributes. The ninety-nine names of God are not given to people directly, but feminine forms built on the same roots are common — names meaning merciful, generous, forbearing, wise.
A third comes from Qur'anic vocabulary that is not a name of anyone: Sidra, the lote tree at the boundary; Kausar, the river of abundance; Tooba, the tree of paradise; Iqra, the imperative read that opens the revelation.
Persian and Turkish then added layers of their own — the moon and flower compounds, Mahnoor and Gulnaz — which are Muslim names by usage without being Arabic at all.