Gender Masculine
Usage Biblical
Scripts יִשְׁמָעֵאל(Ancient Hebrew)
Pronounced Pron. ISH-may-əl(English)  [key·IPA]

Meaning & History

From the Hebrew name יִשְׁמָעֵאל (Yishma'el) meaning "God will hear", from the roots שָׁמַע (shama') meaning "to hear" and אֵל ('el) meaning "God". In the Old Testament this is the name of a son of Abraham. He is the traditional ancestor of the Arab people. Also in the Old Testament, it is borne by a man who assassinates Gedaliah the governor of Judah. The author Herman Melville later used this name for the narrator in his novel Moby-Dick (1851).

Related Names

Other Languages & CulturesIsmail(Albanian) Esmail, Ismaeel, Isma'il, Ismail(Arabic) İsmayıl(Azerbaijani) Ismael(Biblical Greek) Yishma'el(Biblical Hebrew) Ismahel(Biblical Latin) Ismail(Chechen) Ismo(Finnish) Ismaël(French) Ismail(Indonesian) Ismaele(Italian) Ismail(Kazakh) Ismail(Kyrgyz) Ismail(Malay) Esmaeel, Esmaeil, Esmail(Persian) Ismael(Portuguese) Ismael(Spanish) Ismoil(Tajik) İsmail(Turkish) Ismail(Uyghur) Ismoil(Uzbek)

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Entry updated May 29, 2020