What does “Allah” mean?

“Allah” means God. Most scholars trace it to the Arabic al-ilāh, “the god”, which over time became God's own name. It belongs to one family of Semitic words for God, all built on an ancient root, ʾil-.

The family

Hebrew

אֱלֹהִים

Elohim, with El and Eloah: the words for God in the Hebrew Bible. Plural in form, singular in meaning when they refer to God.

Aramaic and Syriac

Alaha

The word Jesus (peace be upon him) would have used. On the cross, the Gospels record him crying Eloi, Eloi (Mark 15:34). Assyrian Christians still say Alaha.

Arabic

الله

Allāh: the word used by Muslims, and by Arab Christians and Jews, for the One God.

Where it came from

The Oxford scholar Nicolai Sinai calls the inner-Arabic origin, from al-ilāh, “entirely plausible” and preferable to borrowing from Syriac. Classical Muslim grammarians debated the question too: some said the word comes from al-ilāh, others that it is a name in its own right. Both can be true: a name can have a known origin.

Before Islam, Arabian poets already spoke of Allāh as Creator and supreme God. And the oldest dated Arabic inscription naming God is Christian: at a church of St Sergius at Zabad in Syria, in 512 CE, it reads “may God remember…”.

ٱللَّهُ لَآ إِلَـٰهَ إِلَّا هُوَ ٱلْحَىُّ ٱلْقَيُّومُAllāhu lā ilāha illā huwa al-Ḥayy al-QayyūmAllah!Qur'an 2:255 · Pickthall (1930)

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What about English “God”?

English God, Greek Theos and Latin Deus come from different language families. Different words, the same One meant. When Muslims speak English, many simply say God.

Sources: Sinai, Rain-Giver, Bone-Breaker, Score-Settler (2019), pp. 7–8; the Zabad inscription, now in the Art & History Museum, Brussels.