Abdullah (name)

Abd Allah (Arabic: عبد الله, romanized: ʻAbd Allāh), also spelled Abdullah, Abdhullah, Abdellah, Abdollah, Abdallah, Abdulla, Abdalla and many others, is an Arabic theophoric name meaning servant of God or "God's follower". It is built from the Arabic words ʻabd (عبد) and Allāh (الله).

Although the first letter "a" in Allāh, as the first letter of the article al-, is usually unstressed in Arabic, it is usually stressed in the pronunciation of this name. The variants Abdollah and Abdullah represent the elision of this "a" following the "u" of the Classical Arabic nominative case (pronounced [o] in Persian).

Humility before God is an essential value of Islam, hence Abdullah is a common name among Muslims. However, the name of the Islamic prophet Muhammad's father was Abdullah. The prophet's father died before his birth, which indicates that the name was already in use in pre-Islamic Arabia.

It is also common among Mizrahi Jews, especially Iraqi Jews and Syrian Jews. The name is cognate to and has the same meaning as the Hebrew Abdiel and, more commonly, Obadiah. There were two Jewish rabbis in Medina before Islam came; they were Abdullah ibn Salam and Abdullah ibn Shuria. Abdullah ibn Saba was a Yemenite Jew during the spread of Islam.

The variant used in the Russian language is "Абдулла́" (Abdulla) (cf. Fedul, which has similar origins), with "Абду́л" (Abdul) and "Габдулла́" (Gabdulla) often used in Adyghe.^[1] The Spanish variant is Abdala.

The Christian Arabic Bible uses the word Allah for God. Presently in the Middle East, the name is sometimes used by Christians as a given or family name.^[2]