Arwa

Meaning and root

The lexica file arwā under r-w-y (ر-و-ي). Al-urwiyya is the female of the wild mountain goat — the ibex of the high, broken country — and arwā is its plural: three to ten are arāwī, and beyond that arwā. The name is therefore a plural in form, used as a singular, which is why no feminine ending appears on it.

A second reading

The same root carries rayy, drinking one's fill, the opposite of thirst — rawiya, riyy, rayyān for the well-watered. Some read the name from that sense rather than from the animal, and the dictionaries record both placements without settling which produced the name. This reference reports both, because the sources report both.

Naming after wild animals

Arwā belongs to a large and old class of Arab names taken from the untamed animals: Asad and Usāma for the lion, Fahd for the leopard, Ṣaqr for the falcon, Thaʿlaba from the fox, Ḍabba from the lizard — the last two carried by whole tribes rather than individuals. The names were given for what the animal was thought to carry — endurance, sure-footedness, wariness, an ability to live where little else does — and the ibex, which keeps to cliffs no herd can follow it up, is a well-chosen example. Reading these names as ornamental misses their point: they belong to a society that named children out of the desert around it.

Attestation

Arwā is attested early: Ibn Ḥazm counts Arwā among the daughters of ʿAbd al-Muṭṭalib, a paternal aunt of the Prophet. The name has remained in use across the Peninsula, Yemen and the Levant since.