Eve  ·  Hawwa

Eve in Islam

Eve is Hawwa in Arabic, written حَوَّاء. The two names belong to the same person, and the two traditions tell her story differently enough to be worth reading side by side.

English
Eve
Arabic
حَوَّاء
Read as
Hawwa
Status
Named in Islamic tradition, not in the Quran
Where the English comes from
Hebrew Chavvah, from a root meaning to live.
What the Arabic carries
Hawwa, from the same sense of living; the mother of humanity.
Full name page
Hawwa on AsrNaam

Is Eve the same as Hawwa? Yes. Eve is the English form and Hawwa the Arabic form of one name. She is not named in the Quran, which calls her the spouse of Adam; the name Hawwa comes from hadith and tradition.

Hawwa in the Quran

Hawwa is not named in the Quran. The text speaks of Adam and his spouse, zawj, throughout the account of the garden, and the name Hawwa comes from hadith and from the wider Islamic tradition rather than from the Quranic text. That is a small fact with consequences, and it is often reported wrongly.

The Quranic account also differs from Genesis in a way that matters. The blame is not placed on her. The verses have Shaytan whispering to them both, both eating, both realising, and both turning in repentance and being forgiven. There is no doctrine of a fall carried down through her.

Hawwa, Hawa and Hava are used as given names across the Arab world, East Africa and the Balkans, and the Swahili Hawa is among the most common girls' names in the region.

Using the name

The full entry for Hawwa carries the Arabic spelling, the Urdu, the pronunciation, the lucky number and the letter-by-letter Ilm ul Huroof reading, along with every romanisation the name is written in.

Open the full Hawwa page →

Questions about Eve and Hawwa

Is Eve the same name as Hawwa?
Eve is the English form and Hawwa is the Arabic form of the same name. They refer to the same figure.
Is Hawwa mentioned in the Quran?
Not by name. The Quran refers to her as the spouse of Adam. The name Hawwa comes from hadith and Islamic tradition.
Does Islam blame Hawwa for the first sin?
No. The Quranic account has both Adam and his spouse tempted, both eating, and both forgiven.
Can a Muslim family use the name Hawwa?
Yes. Hawwa is used as a given name across the Muslim world. AsrNaam carries its full page with the Arabic spelling, the pronunciation, the lucky number and the letter-by-letter Ilm ul Huroof reading.

Other names the two traditions share

Every one of these is one figure under two names.

Jesus and IsaMoses and MusaMary and MaryamAbraham and IbrahimJoseph and YusufDavid and DawudSolomon and SulaymanNoah and NuhJohn and YahyaJacob and YaqubJonah and YunusJob and AyyubAaron and HarunIsaac and Ishaq

Or start from the full list of Biblical names in Islam.

The letters of Hawwa

Ilm ul Huroof reads a name through the Arabic letters it is written with. Each carries a traditional numeric value and a principle. Hawwa is written حواء, and reads as follows.

ح8the living breathو6joining, the link betweenا1origin and the upright singularء1

The values total 16, which reduces to 7. This is a reading of the name's written structure in the letter-science tradition, not a claim about anyone who carries it.

How one name became two

Eve and Hawwa are not translations of each other. They are two descendants of the same Semitic word. The Hebrew is חַוָּה (Chavvah), meaning living, she who gives life. Hebrew and Arabic are sister languages built on shared three-letter roots, so the name passed into Arabic as Hawwa with its consonants largely intact. It reached English by the longer road: Hebrew into Greek, Greek into Latin, Latin into English, each language reshaping the sounds it could not make. That is why Eve and Hawwa look unrelated on the page and are the same name underneath.

The same name, other languages

Eva, Ève, Chavvah, Hawwa, Havva.