Arabic Name in English Letters

Mohammed, Muhammad or Mohamed? See the common spellings, and the rule that matters: match your passport exactly.

Mohammed, Muhammad or Mohamed? All three spell the same name, محمد. Arabic names have no single official English spelling: the spelling depends on who wrote the document, in which country, and in which decade. This tool shows the common English spellings for frequent Arabic names, so you can pick the one that matches your own documents. The rule that matters: use the spelling already on your passport or ID, everywhere, exactly as printed there. A mismatch between a ticket, a certificate and a passport causes real trouble at airports and embassies, and no converter can fix it after the fact.

Your name in Arabic

Type the full name. Words are looked up one by one, so a two-part name like عبد الله is handled as one entry when it matches.

Most common English spelling

Arabic word	English spelling	Other common spellings	Source

Why there is no single correct spelling

Arabic script does not write short vowels, and several Arabic sounds have no English letter, so every transliteration is a choice. Muhammad alone appears in documents as Muhammad, Mohammed, Mohamed, Mohammad, Muhamad, Muhammed and more: one study of name spellings lists over a dozen variants in common use, and older documents add Mahomet and Mehmet. Issuing authorities differ too: an Egyptian passport, a Saudi iqama and a British birth certificate can spell the same name three ways. That is why this page shows variants instead of declaring one winner, and why the spelling on your own passport is the one to copy.

Arabic name	Common English spellings
محمد	Muhammad, Mohammed, Mohamed, Mohammad
أحمد	Ahmed, Ahmad
علي	Ali, Aly
عمر	Omar, Umar
يوسف	Yusuf, Youssef, Yousef
خالد	Khalid, Khaled
حسن	Hassan, Hasan
حسين	Hussein, Husain
إبراهيم	Ibrahim, Ebrahim
عبد الله	Abdullah, Abdallah
عبد الرحمن	Abdulrahman, Abdurrahman, Abdul Rahman
عبد العزيز	Abdulaziz, Abdul Aziz
محمود	Mahmoud, Mahmud
مصطفى	Mustafa, Mostafa
سعيد	Saeed, Said
طارق	Tariq, Tarek
سامي	Sami
كريم	Karim
وليد	Waleed, Walid
فاطمة	Fatima, Fatimah
مريم	Maryam, Mariam
عائشة	Aisha, Ayesha
خديجة	Khadija, Khadijah
زينب	Zainab, Zeinab
سارة	Sara, Sarah
نور	Nour, Noor
ريم	Reem, Rim
هدى	Huda
أمل	Amal
سلمى	Salma
ياسمين	Yasmin, Yasmine
حنان	Hanan
منى	Mona
دينا	Dina
رانيا	Rania
ليلى	Layla, Leila

Names not in the table are transliterated letter by letter and marked as a guess: ح becomes h, خ becomes kh, ع becomes a, غ becomes gh. A guess is a starting point for a form, not a spelling to put on a ticket. When a name is not listed, check how it is already spelled on the person's own documents and use that.

The name that broke every list: محمد

محمد is the most common name in the world, given to an estimated 150 million men and boys, and it has the most spellings. Muhammad, Mohammed, Mohamed, Mohammad, Muhamad, Muhammed, Mahammad, Mohamad and shortened forms like Mohd. and Md. all appear in real documents. The variation comes from three causes: short vowels are not written in Arabic, so translators fill them in differently; the ح sound has no English letter, so it becomes h or is dropped; and doubled consonants are written single or double by different offices. No transliteration standard fixes this, because passports follow the issuing country's practice, not a single global table.

The same pattern repeats across the list. أحمد is Ahmed or Ahmad. عبد الله is Abdullah or Abdallah, and the عبد prefix alone generates dozens of forms: Abdul, Abdel, Abd al-, Abd el-. فاطمة is Fatima or Fatimah, with the final ة becoming a or ah. يوسف is Yusuf, Youssef or Yousef. A converter that prints one spelling and calls it official would be wrong most of the time, so this page prints the variants and tells you which one to trust: the one already on the person's documents.

For travel, the passport wins

Airlines check the ticket against the passport spelling, letter by letter. If your passport says Mohamed and your ticket says Muhammad, expect questions at check-in. Book with the passport spelling, and use the same spelling on visas, certificates and school records where the form allows a choice.

For a new form, pick one and stay with it

If no document fixes the spelling yet, pick the most common variant on this page and use it on every form from then on. Consistency across your own records matters more than which variant you picked, because every future check compares your forms against each other.

Frequently Asked Questions

There is no single correct spelling. Muhammad, Mohammed, Mohamed and Mohammad all appear in real passports and documents. Use the spelling already printed on the person's own passport or ID, everywhere, exactly as printed.

Arabic script does not write short vowels, several Arabic sounds have no English letter, and issuing authorities follow different local practices. An Egyptian passport, a Saudi iqama and a British birth certificate can spell the same name three ways.

The tool transliterates it letter by letter and marks the result as a guess. Treat that as a starting point only: check how the name is already spelled on the person's own documents and use that spelling instead.

The passport spelling, letter by letter. Airlines check the ticket against the passport, and a mismatch causes problems at check-in.

Because عبد الله is a two-word name (servant of God) that functions as one given name. The tool matches two-word entries first, so عبد الله gives Abdullah rather than two separate guesses.

No. All lookup and transliteration runs in your browser on this page. Nothing is uploaded or stored.