Jonah · Yunus
Jonah in Islam
Jonah is Yunus in Arabic, written يُونُس. The two names belong to the same person, and the two traditions tell his story differently enough to be worth reading side by side.
- English
- Jonah
- Arabic
- يُونُس
- Read as
- Yunus
- Status
- Prophet in Islam
- Where the English comes from
- Hebrew Yonah, dove.
- What the Arabic carries
- Yunus, the Quranic form of the same name.
- Full name page
- Yunus on AsrNaam
Is Jonah the same as Yunus? Yes. Jonah is the English form and Yunus the Arabic form of one name. He is Dhun-Nun, the one of the fish, and the words he said in the dark are among the most repeated prayers in Islam.
Yunus in the Quran
Yunus is the prophet who left. The Quran says he went off angry, thinking he would not be constrained, and that is the whole of the failure it records. The ship, the lot, the sea and the fish follow. He is called Dhun-Nun, the one of the fish, and Sahib al-Hut, the companion of the whale.
What he says inside the dark is one of the most repeated sentences in Muslim practice: there is no god but You, glory be to You, I have been among the wrongdoers. Hadith records that no Muslim ever prays with those words without being answered, and it is said quietly by a great many people who could not name the chapter it comes from.
Surah Yunus, the tenth chapter, notes that his was the one town whose people believed in time and were spared. The prophet who ran is the prophet whose mission worked.
Using the name
The full entry for Yunus 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.
Questions about Jonah and Yunus
Is Jonah the same name as Yunus?
Is Yunus the same as Jonah?
What is the dua of Yunus?
Can a Muslim family use the name Yunus?
Other names the two traditions share
Every one of these is one figure under two names.
Or start from the full list of Biblical names in Islam.