Arabic in Different Languages: the Name of the Arabic Language in 83
Arabic calls itself العربيّة (al-ʿarabīyâ); Spanish and Portuguese say árabe, Turkish Arapça, Swahili kiarabu and Japanese アラビア語 (arabiago). The two tables give the name of the language in 83 languages and 16 writing systems.
One root behind almost every name
Nearly every name in these tables goes back to the same word, ʿarab, the name of the people, with an adjective ending added to it. Arabic itself turns it into al-ʿarabīyâ, “the Arabic (language)”, and Persian, Urdu and Sindhi borrowed the adjective as عربی or عربي (ʿarabī). Its ISO 639 codes are ar and ara.1
Hindi, Marathi and Nepali share one Devanagari spelling, अरबी (arabī), taken from that adjective. Hebrew ערבית (ʿarabīt) is formed with the Hebrew ending for language names, and the two Ethiopian languages, Amharic and Tigrinya, add their own suffix -ña to the stem.
Arabic in different languages written in the Latin alphabet
47 rows. A row lists every language that writes the word identically; Azerbaijani, Bosnian, Turkmen and Uzbek also have a Cyrillic row, and Sorani Kurdish and Uyghur an Arabic-script row, in the second table.
| Language · ISO 639 code | Name of Arabic | Romanisation |
|---|---|---|
| English · eng | Arabic | |
| Galician, Portuguese, Spanish · glg, por, spa | árabe | |
| Danish, Norwegian · dan, nor | arabisk | |
| German, Dutch · deu, nld | Arabisch | |
| French, Interlingua · fra, ina | arabe | |
| Indonesian, Malay · ind, msa | bahasa Arab | |
| Afrikaans · afr | Arabies | |
| Azerbaijani (Latin) · aze | ərəbcə | |
| Bosnian (Latin) · bos | arapski | |
| Breton · bre | arabeg | |
| Catalan · cat | àrab | |
| Czech · ces | arabština | |
| Welsh · cym | Arabeg | |
| Esperanto · epo | araba | |
| Estonian · est | araabi | |
| Basque · eus | arabiera | |
| Faroese · fao | arabiskt | |
| Finnish · fin | arabia | |
| West Frisian · fry | Arabysk | |
| Scottish Gaelic · gla | Arabais | |
| Irish · gle | Araibis | |
| Guarani · grn | araviañe'ẽ | |
| Croatian · hrv | arapski | |
| Hungarian · hun | arab | |
| Icelandic · isl | arabíska | |
| Italian · ita | arabo | |
| Latin · lat | arabice | |
| Latvian · lav | arābu | |
| Lithuanian · lit | arabų | |
| Maltese · mlt | Għarbi | |
| Polish · pol | arabski | |
| Romanian · ron | arabă | |
| Slovak · slk | arabčina | |
| Slovene · slv | arabščina | |
| Somali · som | carabi | |
| Albanian · sqi | arabishte | |
| Swahili · swa | kiarabu | |
| Swedish · swe | arabiska | |
| Tagalog · tgl | Arabo | |
| Turkmen (Latin) · tuk | arapça | |
| Turkish · tur | Arapça | |
| Uzbek (Latin) · uzb | arabcha | |
| Vietnamese · vie | tiếng A Rập | |
| Xhosa · xho | isi-Arabu | |
| Zulu · zul | isi-Arabhu | |
| Sorani Kurdish (Latin) · ckb | ʿerebî | |
| Uyghur (Latin) · uig | erepche |
Arabic in Cyrillic, Arabic, Hebrew, Ethiopic, Indic and East Asian scripts
34 rows, most with a Latin romanisation. Names in Arabic script, Hebrew and Yiddish are set right to left.
| Language · ISO 639 code | Name of Arabic | Romanisation |
|---|---|---|
| Azerbaijani (Cyrillic) · aze | әрәбҹә | |
| Bosnian (Cyrillic) · bos | арапски | |
| Turkmen (Cyrillic) · tuk | арапча | |
| Uzbek (Cyrillic) · uzb | арабча | |
| Macedonian, Serbian · mkd, srp | арапски | arapski |
| Belarusian · bel | арабская | arabskaja |
| Bulgarian · bul | арабски | arabski |
| Kyrgyz · kir | арабча | arabča |
| Mongolian · mon | араб | arab |
| Russian · rus | арабский | arabskij |
| Tajik (Cyrillic) · tgk | арабӣ | arabī |
| Tajik (Arabic script) · tgk | عربی | ʿarabī |
| Ukrainian · ukr | арабська | arabs'ka |
| Arabic · ara | العربيّة | al-ʿarabīyâ |
| Persian · fas | عربی | ʿarabī |
| Sorani Kurdish (Arabic script) · ckb | عهرهبی | |
| Sindhi · snd | عربي | ʿarabī |
| Uyghur (Arabic script) · uig | ئهرهپچه | |
| Urdu · urd | عربی | ʿarabī |
| Amharic · amh | ዐርቢኛ | ʿărəbiña |
| Tigrinya · tir | ዓረበኛ | ʿaräbäña |
| Hebrew · heb | ערבית | ʿarabīt |
| Yiddish · yid | אַראַביש | arabiš |
| Greek · ell | αραβικά | araviká |
| Armenian · hye | արաբերեն | araberen |
| Georgian · kat | არაბული | arabuli |
| Hindi, Marathi, Nepali · hin, mar, nep | अरबी | arabī |
| Tamil · tam | அரேபியம் | arēpiyam |
| Chinese · zho | 阿拉伯语 / 阿拉伯文 | ālābóyǔ / ālābówén |
| Japanese · jpn | アラビア語 | arabiago |
| Korean · kor | 아라비아어 | arabiaeo |
| Dzongkha · dzo | ཨེ་ར་སྦིག | e.ra.sbig |
| Thai · tha | ภาษาอาหรับ | pʰāsāāhrâp |
| Lao · lao | ພາສາອາຣັບ | pʰāsāālâp |
How the languages shape the name of Arabic
Read across the rows and three habits stand out.
Endings for languages
Turkic languages attach -ça, -ča or -cha: Arapça in Turkish, arabča in Kyrgyz, arabcha in Uzbek, ərəbcə in Azerbaijani. Slavic languages use an adjective, arabski in Polish and Bulgarian, арабский (arabskij) in Russian, with a p in the South Slavic arapski. Czech and Slovak build a noun instead, arabština and arabčina.
A prefix in front
Bantu languages put a class prefix before the stem, ki- in Swahili kiarabu, isi- in Xhosa isi-Arabu and Zulu isi-Arabhu. Asian languages add their word for language: 語 in Japanese アラビア語, 语 and 文 in Chinese 阿拉伯语 and 阿拉伯文, ภาษา in Thai, ພາສາ in Lao, tiếng in Vietnamese tiếng A Rập.
Spellings close to home
Maltese writes Għarbi, with the digraph għ at the start. Guarani adds ñe'ẽ, its word for language, in araviañe'ẽ, and Vietnamese spells the borrowed name in two syllables, A Rập.
Questions about the name of Arabic in other languages
What is Arabic called in Arabic?
العربيّة, romanised al-ʿarabīyâ: the article al- plus the adjective of ʿarab.
How do Chinese and Japanese write Arabic?
Chinese has 阿拉伯语 (ālābóyǔ) for the spoken and 阿拉伯文 (ālābówén) for the written language; Japanese writes アラビア語 (arabiago) in katakana plus the character 語.
What are the ISO 639 codes of Arabic?
ar in ISO 639-1 and ara in ISO 639-2 and ISO 639-3. The language code list explains the codes in the first column.
- 1ISO 639-2 Registration Authority (Library of Congress), Codes for the Representation of Names of Languages, checked 28 October 2026. Arabic: ara (ISO 639-2), ar (ISO 639-1). ↑