Noah  ·  Nuh

Noah in Islam

Noah is Nuh in Arabic, written نُوح. 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
Noah
Arabic
نُوح
Read as
Nuh
Status
Prophet in Islam
Where the English comes from
Hebrew Noach, rest or comfort.
What the Arabic carries
Nuh, the Quranic form of the same name.
Full name page
Nuh on AsrNaam

Is Noah the same as Nuh? Yes. Noah is the English form and Nuh the Arabic form of one name. His chapter is a record of nine hundred and fifty years of being ignored, and of a son who would not board.

Nuh in the Quran

Nuh has a chapter of his own, the seventy-first, and it is mostly a record of being ignored. He tells God he has called his people by night and by day, in public and in private, and that they put their fingers in their ears and pulled their garments over themselves. The Quran says he was among them for nine hundred and fifty years.

The ark and the flood follow, but the Quranic emphasis falls on a scene Genesis does not have: Nuh calling to a son who stayed behind, telling him to board, and the son answering that he will climb a mountain instead. He is lost. Nuh appeals, and is told that this son is not of his family, because his conduct was not righteous.

It is one of the hardest passages in the book, and it is the reason Nuh is read in Islam as the prophet of endurance rather than of rescue.

Using the name

The full entry for Nuh 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 Nuh page →

Questions about Noah and Nuh

Is Noah the same name as Nuh?
Noah is the English form and Nuh is the Arabic form of the same name. They refer to the same figure.
Is Nuh the same as Noah?
Yes. Nuh is the Arabic form of the Hebrew Noach, the prophet of the flood and the ark.
Does the Quran give the story of the flood?
Yes, across several chapters, with the fullest account in Surah Hud and a chapter, Surah Nuh, given to his preaching rather than to the flood itself.
Can a Muslim family use the name Nuh?
Yes. Nuh 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.

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