Most Popular Baby Girl Names in Jordan 2023 and Their Meanings

The name given most often to baby girls born in Jordan in 2023 was a word most of us know as a scent: Misk (مسك), "musk". 2,356 girls received it, followed by Salma and Watin (وتين). Further down the list there are more surprises: next to long-established names such as Maryam and Sara you find ماسة (Masa, "diamond"), زينة (Zeina, "adornment") and two names of Turkish origin, Aylin and Selin.

Below are all 25 names with their Arabic spelling, transliteration, meaning and Abjad value, followed by a look at the numbers, the names' actual links to the Qur'an and their letter structure.

Where does the list come from?

The data come from the annual report of Jordan's Civil Status and Passports Department (دائرة الأحوال المدنية والجوازات) and cover the registered births of Jordanian babies nationwide. The figures are taken from the press report that quoted the department's announcement (Akhbar Hayat, 29 October 2024).

That report names 25 girls' names, but baby counts were published only for the top 10. From 11th place on, the order is the order of the published list, and we do not estimate counts for those names. One more note: the report printed the third name as "تين"; compared with the lists of other years, it is clearly وتين (Watin).

The 25 girls' names of 2023

What the numbers say

• Misk leads clearly. 359 more babies were named Misk than Salma, in second place. Misk was given to more than twice as many girls as Aylin in 10th place.
• Some places are neck and neck. Only 40 babies separate Watin and ماسة (Masa), 15 separate Mira and Sara, and 19 separate لين (Lin) and Aylin.
• The weight of the top three. The top 10 names were given to 14,888 girls in total; 6,151 of them, more than two fifths, received one of the top three.
• Short names: 22 of the 25 names have three or four letters in Arabic script; only Aylin, Maria and Tulin have five.

The stories behind the names: five small groups

Scent, jewels, adornment

Three word-names near the top come from the same world: Misk (musk), ماسة (diamond) and زينة (adornment). The rose appears twice: جوري (Jouri, "Damask rose") and روز, the Arabic spelling of the Western name Rose.

Time-honoured classics

Salma, Maryam and Sara have been in use for centuries. Maryam is the name of Mary, the only woman named in the Qur'an, and the 19th sura of the Qur'an bears her name. Maria is the Latin form of the same name, Miriam.

Softness and delicacy

لين (Lin) and ليان (Layan) mean "soft, gentle", and رفيف (Rafif) "delicate, glistening with dew". For Lin and Rafif these are the dictionary meanings of the words.

Sky and light

سما (Sama) means sky, نور (Nur) light; Nur is also associated with al-Nur, one of the names of God. فرح (Farah) stands close to this group with its meaning of joy.

Names of Turkish origin

Aylin (أيلين) is 10th and Selin (سلين) 21st; both are Turkish names written in Arabic letters. سيلا (Sila) and تولين (Tulin) sound like the Turkish Sıla and Tülin, but we could not confirm that link in the sources, so their origin is marked "uncertain" in the table. The same applies to Mira and Naya.

True or false?

"Watin is a name that appears in the Qur'an." Partly. The word الوتين occurs once in the Qur'an, in Surat al-Haqqa 69:46, but not as a personal name. It means the main artery attached to the heart, the aorta; translations render it as "aorta" or "life-artery". The context is a warning: the verses describe what would have happened had the Prophet fabricated sayings in God's name. So it would be wrong to attach a special meaning from this verse to the name.

"The name Misk comes from the Qur'an." True as a word. Surat al-Mutaffifin 83:26 says of the drink served in Paradise "ختامه مسك", "its seal is musk".

"Zeina and Hur are Qur'anic words too." True. زينة in the sense of "adornment" occurs for example in Surat al-Kahf 18:7; حور occurs in Surat al-Dukhan 44:54 and Surat al-Rahman 55:72.

"A name with a higher Abjad value is stronger." False. The highest value in the list, 1037, belongs to Ghazal, simply because its first letter غ alone is worth 1000.

Through the Abjad lens

We calculate the Abjad value as the sum of the letters in the name's established Arabic spelling: the article "al-" is not counted, a doubled letter (shadda) is counted once, the letter carrying a hamza is taken as written, and a final ة counts as ه, 5.

• First letters of the top 10: 5 names begin with a Fire letter (four with م, Aylin with ا), 3 with a Water letter (Salma and Sara with س, Zeina with ز), 1 with the Air letter و (Watin) and 1 with the Earth letter ل (Lin). Across all 25 names every element is represented: 7 Fire, 7 Water, 6 Earth, 5 Air. This count follows the classical classification used on our site; some authors use a different one.
• Lowest and highest: the lowest value is 62 for نايا (Naya), the highest 1037 for Ghazal.
• Three names, one number: Aylin, Sama and Sila all add up to 101.
• One letter makes the difference: وتين is 466; written تين, as in the press report, it drops to 460 and becomes an entirely different word meaning "fig". Maria is 252 as ماريا and 256 as مارية. Salma's spellings سلمى and سلمي give the same value: 140. No spelling is more auspicious than another, but this is why the spelling must be settled before any calculation.

A name's value on its own is not the analysis. In the Abjad tradition, what matters is the balance between the name's letters and elements and the names of the mother and father; for the baby's star chart (yıldızname) the mother's name also enters the calculation. The same name Misk may complete a missing element in one family and reinforce an already dominant one in another.

And 2024 and 2025?

For the next two years only partial lists are available: the top 5 girls' names for 2024 and the top 4 for 2025. Misk is first in both years. We cover those two years in a separate article.

This article is for information only. Abjad interpretations are based on tradition and contain no definitive judgment or guarantee about any name.

Source: Jordan Civil Status and Passports Department (CSPD), 2023 annual report, as quoted in the press (Akhbar Hayat, 29 October 2024). The figures refer to Jordanian baby girls registered in 2023; counts were published only for the top 10 names.