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. The name of the Islamic prophet Muhammad's father was Abdullah. As the prophet's father died before his birth, this indicates that the name was already in use in pre-Islamic Arabia. It is also common among Mizrahi Jews and Sephardic Jews, especially Iraqi Jews and Syrian Jews. Among the latter, the name holds historical significance in Sephardic communities, particularly those from Aleppo, Syria, where the variant "Abdalla" was traditionally used as a surname. The name is cognate to, and has the same meaning as, the Hebrew Abdiel, Obadiah and also, Ovadia. A notable bearer was Abdallah Somekh (1813–1889), who was an influential Sephardic rabbi in Ottoman Iraq. Two Jewish rabbis were present in Medina before the advent of Islam: Abdullah ibn Salam and Abdullah ibn Saba. Ovadia Yosef, the former Sephardic Chief Rabbi of Israel, was born Abdalla Youssef. 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. The Spanish variant is Abdala. The Turkic Tatar language spells it as Ğabdulla (Габдулла). The Christian Arabic Bible uses the word...