If you are building an Islamic app - a names finder, a family planner, a content site - one of the first technical problems is the data: where do you get a clean, structured list of Muslim names with their Arabic spelling, meanings and gender, without scraping or paying for a vague CSV?
We faced the same problem while building Moustaqim, a multilingual Islamic platform, so we opened our data.
The dataset
The muslim-names-dataset repository contains a JSON sample released under CC0 (public domain):
{ "id": 1, "name": "Muhammad", "arabic": "محمد", "meaning": "Praiseworthy", "gender": "M" }
Each entry includes the Latin spelling, the Arabic script, a short meaning and the gender. The sample is small on purpose (30 curated entries); the goal is to give you a clean schema you can extend or map against the full platform.
Why CC0 matters
Most "free" name lists online are copied from each other with unclear licensing. CC0 means you can use it in a commercial app, remix it, translate it, or ship it inside a mobile app without asking. Attribution is appreciated but not required.
Ideas we would love to see
- Mobile apps for expecting parents, with favorites and sharing
- Language learning tools that use names as vocabulary anchors
- Statistical or historical analyses of name trends across regions
- API wrappers that merge names with transliteration libraries
The main moustaqim repository also documents the platform's other datasets. Pull requests that improve the data quality (missing meanings, alternative spellings) are welcome.
The long-term goal is simple: structured, licensing-safe Islamic data that any developer can build on.
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