Emma written in the Arabic script, with pronunciation, a letter-by-letter breakdown, and the story behind the name.
Each Arabic letter below maps to part of the name — remember that Arabic reads right to left.
Emma derives from the Germanic root ermen, "whole" or "universal," and has topped naming charts across Europe and the Americas for two decades. It has no traditional Arabic counterpart, so Arabic renders it phonetically — a clean, short transliteration.
Arabic has no short e sound, so the E of Emma becomes a long ee built from hamza (إ) plus yā (ي). The doubled m of the English spelling is written with a single mīm — doubling in Arabic is spoken (and optionally marked with a shaddah: إمّا) rather than spelled with two letters.
Emma is written إيما, reading right to left: alif with hamza (إ), yā (ي), mīm (م), and alif (ا). The first two letters together produce the long ee that replaces the English short e, which Arabic does not have.
Arabic marks doubled consonants with a pronunciation symbol called shaddah (ّ) rather than by writing the letter twice. In names, the shaddah is usually left unwritten, so إيما with a single mīm is the standard spelling — the doubling survives in speech, not in print.
EE-mah, with a long first vowel. It differs slightly from the English EH-ma because Arabic lacks the short e sound; the hamza-yā combination opens the name with a long ee instead. Arabic speakers will recognize it immediately as the international name Emma.