Arabic, Persian and Urdu Baby Names in India

About this collection

Arabic, Persian and Urdu have supplied Indian given names for many centuries, and many of the most common names in the country come from them. This page gathers the ones in our catalog: Muhammad, Ahmed, Ali, Hamza, Ibrahim and Zaid for boys; Fatima, Maryam, Aisha, Saira, Sana, Mahira and Inaya for girls; and Aman, Kabir, Armaan, Pari and Zoya, which families of every background use.

The three languages are related in practice rather than by descent. Arabic supplied the religious and classical vocabulary, Persian carried it into India and added its own words such as pari for a fairy and armaan for a wish, and Urdu is the Indian language in which most of these names are written today. Our guides cite the headword in Arabic or Perso-Arabic script and show the Devanagari spelling used in Hindi.

Pronunciation is where these names most often go wrong in a mixed setting. Arabic distinguishes sounds that Hindi and English do not, and several names have two accepted English spellings, such as Ahmed and Ahmad or Aisha and Ayesha. Each guide notes the alternatives so you can choose a spelling and keep it consistent on documents.