Hafsa — Name Meaning in Islam

Root: ح-ف-ص (ḥ-f-ṣ). The dictionaries give ḥafṣ as a lion cub, and also as a leather container in which grain was kept. Ḥafṣa is the feminine, and the lion-cub sense is the one Arabs felt when using it as a name.

From the same root: Ḥafṣ, the masculine — best known through Hafs, the transmitter after whom the reading of the Qur'an used by most of the Muslim world today is named.

Who carried it: Hafsa bint Umar ibn al-Khattab, wife of the Prophet ﷺ and one of the Mothers of the Believers, daughter of the second caliph. She could read and write at a time when few could, and the collected sheets of the Qur'an gathered in Abu Bakr's caliphate were kept in her custody; when Uthman had the copies made and sent to the regions, it was that manuscript in her keeping that was the reference. Every printed Qur'an in the world descends from that thread.

Spellings: Hafsa, Hafsah, Hafza, Hafsa (Turkish, borne by Ottoman royal women), Hafshah (Indonesian), Hafsa (Urdu), حفصة.

Pronunciation: ḤAF-ṣa — the opening ḥ is the throat ḥāʾ, and the ṣ is the emphatic ṣād, heavier and further back than an English s.

Note: Hafsa (ح-ف-ص) and Hafiza (ح-ف-ظ, "one who guards, who has memorised the Qur'an") come from different roots and are not variants of one name.