Zahra

Zahra — زهراء — means radiant or luminous, specifically the brilliance of something that glows from within. It is the famed honorific of Fatima al-Zahra, the Prophet Muhammad's daughter, matriarch of his descendants and central figure in Shia devotion. The name is woven into the fabric of the Muslim world from Morocco to Indonesia, and Cairo's thousand-year-old al-Azhar university carries the same root. Two syllables, an open a in the middle, a soft trilled r. In the United States it has risen steadily through the 2000s and 2010s. Zahra is a name that carries light as its primary meaning, unmistakable and unhurried.