Yasmin — Name Meaning in Islam

Origin: Persian yāsaman, the jasmine flower, borrowed into Arabic as yāsamīn. It is one of a small group of Arabic names taken from Persian rather than built from an Arabic root, and the borrowing is old enough that the classical poets use it freely.

The word's travels: the same Persian original gave Greek iasmé, and through it the European jasmine, jasmin, gelsomino. So Yasmin and Jasmine are the same word arriving in Europe by one road and in Arabia by another.

What the flower carried: in classical Arabic writing jasmine stands for a scent that arrives before the thing itself is seen — it is a night-flowering plant, and the association is with fragrance in the dark rather than with display. Persian and Arabic garden poetry pair it with the rose as the quieter of the two.

Spellings: Yasmin, Yasmeen, Yasmine, Yasemin (Turkish), Yasmin (Indonesian, Urdu), Yasmina (Maghrebi), ياسمين.

Pronunciation: yas-MEEN.

Note: the name has no Arabic root to derive from, so a page that offers one is inventing it. Its meaning is simply the flower, and that has been enough for as long as it has been given.

Related: Yasmina, Yasamin. Not related to Yasin (ياسين), which is a different word entirely — the opening letters of the thirty-sixth sūra.