The Beautiful Names of God

The Quran contains 87 names used specifically for God. God Himself calls them His Beautiful Names - Al-Asmaa Al-Husna - and invites the believers to call upon Him by them:

[7:180] To God belong the Beautiful Names, so call upon Him by them.

The first and most encompassing of these names is Allah. The remaining 86 are distributed throughout the Quran, each revealing a distinct quality or attribute of the One who spoke them into revelation.

The list below presents all 87 names derived directly from the Quran, followed by an explanation of the methodology used to compile it - and why a number of names found on the traditional list of "99 names" do not belong there.

The 87 Beautiful Names

The English letters used below are the nearest phonetic approximations to the original Arabic.

Methodology: The Rules of Inclusion

The traditional list of "99 names of God" circulated in Islamic scholarship contains a number of names that do not belong there. Some are not found in the Quran at all. Some appear in the Quran only as verbs describing God's actions, not as names God applies to Himself. And some, on careful examination, are not befitting of God's majesty. The three rules below explain how the list above was compiled and why certain traditional names were excluded.

Rule 1: Names Must Appear in the Quran as Names Applied to God

Two conditions must both be satisfied. The name must appear in the Quran, and it must appear specifically as a name - a noun - used for God. Words that appear only in verb form, describing an action God performs, are not included. God invited us to call upon Him by His Beautiful Names. It follows that those names would be found in His Book, stated as names. What is not found in the Quran in that form was discarded.

The distinction between verb and name is not pedantic - it is decisive. Consider the word basata, meaning to extend or stretch. This verb appears in the Quran as an action God performs:

[13:26] God extends the provision for whom He wills and restricts it.

But the noun form - Basit, "the One who extends" - does not appear in the Quran as a name for God. In fact, the only occurrence of basit as a noun in the Quran describes something else entirely:

[18:18] You would think them awake as they laid down. We turned them to the right side and the left side while their dog stretched out his forepaws at the entrance.

The word appears once as a noun in the Quran - applied to a dog. It is not a name of God, and including it on any list of God's Beautiful Names is both Quranically unfounded and, on reflection, absurd.

The correct approach is illustrated by the name Shaheed - The Witness. The verb form appears as an action God performs:

[3:18] God bears witness that there is no god except Him, and so do the angels and those who possess knowledge.

And the noun form appears explicitly as a name applied to God:

[3:98] Say, "O People of the Book, why do you disbelieve in God's revelations when God is Witness over what you do?"

Both conditions are met. Shaheed belongs on the list.

Among the names found on traditional lists that fail this test are: Al-Mu'izz, Al-Muzhil, Al-Mumeet, Al-Muhsi, Al-Muntaqim, Al-Nafei, Al-Noor, Al-Rafei, Al-Khafid, Al-Qabid, and Al-Ba'ith. None of these appear in the Quran as names applied to God, and they have been excluded accordingly.

Rule 2: Sub-Names Covered by a More Comprehensive Name Are Not Listed Separately

The Quran contains many phrases describing God as Lord of specific things: Lord of the Throne (43:82), Lord of the Noble Throne (23:116), Lord of the Great Throne (23:86), Lord of the two easts and Lord of the two wests (55:17), Lord of the east and the west (73:9), Lord of the heavens and Lord of the earth (45:36), Lord of all dignity (37:180), Lord of Sirius (53:49), Lord of the daybreak (113:1), and Lord of the people (114:1).

Every one of these is encompassed by a single, all-inclusive name: Rab Al-Alameen - Lord of the Worlds, meaning Lord of all that exists. Including the comprehensive name while omitting the sub-names reflects the Quran's own economy. God is Lord of Sirius not as a separate attribute but as one expression of His universal lordship. The comprehensive name carries all of them within it.

Rule 3: Names That Misrepresent God's Nature Are Excluded

Some names found on traditional lists have been removed not only because they lack Quranic authority but because they attribute to God qualities that are either inapplicable to Him or actively unworthy of His majesty. Three examples illustrate this.

Saboor - The Patient One. This name does not appear in the Quran. Beyond its absence, the name is not appropriate for God. In the Quran, patience is consistently associated with the experience of hardship and suffering:

[22:34-35] Give good news to the humble, who, when God is mentioned, their hearts tremble, and those who are patient in the face of what has afflicted them.

[2:177] And the ones who are patient through misery, hardship and during battle.

Patience is a virtue God commands for human beings precisely because human beings suffer. It is the capacity to endure adversity without being broken by it. To apply this name to God - who does not suffer, who does not endure hardship, who exists in a state that no trial can touch - is to project a human limitation onto the Creator. The name is not befitting.

Rasheed - The Guided One. This name is equally inappropriate. Throughout the Quran, guidance flows from God outward to His creation - it is something He gives, not something He receives:

[21:51] And We granted Abraham his sound judgement previously.

To call God "The Guided One" inverts this relationship entirely, implying that God is Himself the recipient of guidance rather than its eternal source. The name contradicts the very nature it purports to honor.

Al-Daar - The Inflictor of Harm. This name does not appear in the Quran, and its exclusion requires no elaborate argument. Taken alone and out of context, it portrays God as a being who inflicts pain and harm - a description that is both Quranically unsubstantiated and theologically offensive. The Quran does teach that trials and adversity befall people, but it also teaches that such things are consequences of human choices rather than expressions of divine cruelty:

[42:30] Whatever disaster strikes you is but a consequence of what your own hands have earned, but He pardons much.

God does not subject His servants to suffering for its own sake. A name that implies otherwise has no place among the Beautiful Names - and no foundation in the Book that contains them.

The Beautiful Names of God are not a human compilation. They are a divine self-disclosure - God describing Himself, in His own words, in His own Book. The task of the believer is to receive them as they were given: neither adding to them from tradition nor subtracting from them through neglect. What God called His Beautiful Names are found in the Quran. That is where the search for them begins and ends.

It is important to note that most, if not all, the names covered in this article actually serve as both an umbrella term for other attributes, and as proper nouns. If you're looking for a specific name, chances are it's already been classified as a child under one of the listed names God has given us.