Jinnah: The Name
Dileep Karanth
(This paper was published in Reddy Smriti: Exploring the Indian Past (Commemoration
Volume in honour of Dr. Y. Gopal Reddy), pp. 520-526, P. Chenna Reddy, Ed., B.R.
Publishing, New Delhi, 2017.)
It is a pleasure to thank the editor and the publisher for their gracious permission to
reproduce this paper.
(In this version that has been made available on the Internet, a minor typo has been
corrected.)
Introduction
Mohammed Ali Jinnah was the founder of Pakistan, which along with India,
emerged in 1947, as a successor state to British India. At the time of its birth, Pakistan
was the largest Islamic state in the world. As the leader of the most populous Muslim
country in the world, Jinnah commanded great prestige in the Islamic world. One of
Jinnah’s biographers highlights his enormous influence in history in the opening lines of
his book:
Few individuals significantly alter the course of history. Fewer still modify the
map of the world. Hardly anyone can be credited with creating a nation-state.
Mohammad Ali Jinnah did all three.1
Strangely, despite Jinnah’s great importance on the world stage, very few
biographers have so far chosen to write about his momentous lifetime. Popular rumour
mills based on hearsay, and political slants on the part of government-sponsored
historians, have together contributed to a situation in which historical facts have yielded
ground to speculations about such matters as Jinnah’s early life, his joint membership in
the Indian National Congress and the Indian Union Muslim League, his earlier positions
favouring Hindu-Muslim cooperation and his later uncompromising demand for a
Muslim state. Two biographies of Jinnah by Western scholars – one by Hector Bolitho2
and one by Stanley Wolpert already mentioned above – have shed some light on Jinnah’s
life and deeds, but have not completely succeeded in ending the speculations about them.
Controversies surrounding the name Jinnah
In this article, we attempt to resolve only one of the many controversies centered
round Muhammad Ali Jinnah – one involving his last name. The name Jinnah is certainly
very rare. It is not a patronymic, such as Jamalzadeh or Daoudpour, which are common
in Iran, but not in India. ‘Jinnah’ is not a name derived from a place name (such as
Barelwi or Poonawala). Neither is it a title (such as Khan or Mirza), nor a caste/tribe
1
Jinnah of Pakistan, Wolpert, Stanley, Oxford University Press (1984), p. vii.
Jinnah: Creator of Pakistan, Bolitho, Hector, John Murray, 1954. This biography was commissioned by
the Government of Pakistan (Jinnah, Pakistan and Islamic Identity: The Search for Saladin, Akbar S.
Ahmed, 1997, p. 29).
2
name (such as Bugti or Soomro). It is not based on a profession, such as Engineer, or
even Lokhandwala, which are common in some Muslim communities in India. Neither is
it one of the many names taken from Islamic history as it unfolded in West and Central
Asia, and later in India (such as the Persian name Jahangir or the Arabic name Akbar).
More importantly, ‘Jinnah’ is not named for any of the personalities from early Islamic
history, such as the names of the Prophet’s Companions. Nor is his name one of the many
popular names involving an attribute of the Creator, such as ‘Abd-ul-Rahim’ (‘Servant of
the Merciful One), or ‘Mazhar-ul-Haq’ (‘Manifestation of the Truth’).3
The striking fact about the modern spelling of Jinnah’s name in Urdu is that it is
=( ﺎJinn ḥ), and not =( ﺎJinn h). This is because the letter (ḥeḥ) represents a
sound peculiar to Arabic, which does not exist in Persian or Indian languages. When
Arabic words are borrowed into Persian or Urdu, usually the Arabic spelling is retained,
but the pronunciations of some Arabic letters are changed to the nearest Persian sounds.
Thus the letters ض, ذ,ز, and ظ, which represent different sounds in Arabic are all
pronounced as ‘z’ in Persian and hence in Urdu. Similarly and ﮬare different in Arabic,
but pronounced identically as ‘h’ in Persian and Urdu. The sound ‘h’ in native Persian or
Urdu words could only be represented by ( ﮬwhich is written as when it occurs at the
end of a word). The occurrence of the letter in an Urdu word thus indicates a definite
Arabic origin for the word. But the name Jinnah is uncommon in Arabic – in fact, the
author of this article has not found it in any Arabic dictionary he has consulted. Also,
Urdu books written before partition often spell Jinnah’s name as “Jīn ” () ﻴ ﺎ4. The
spelling seems to have changed in later times. The new spelling =( ﺎJinn ḥ) does not
have the vowel ‘i’ (because short vowels are not written in Urdu), and has a final ‘h’.
The uniqueness of the name seems to have puzzled many people, and various
explanations have been offered, which often contradict each other at least partly. That the
very name of the founder of a nation would be so complicated is surprising. It is so,
because Jinnah’s family was Gujarati-speaking, and did not know Urdu, but later works
on Jinnah in Urdu often use English language materials as primary sources, or are based
on verbal reminiscences directly transcribed into Urdu. There is a loss of accuracy in
going from English to Urdu, because English spelling does not distinguish between the
two kinds of ‘h’ used in Arabic. Gujarati also does not make a distinction between the
two kinds of ‘h’. Thus, there is the possibility of a spurious distinction being introduced
in the secondary Urdu literature.
The name as explained in the secondary literature
Riaz Ahmad, a historian from the National Institute of Historical and Cultural
Research at Islamabad, informs us that:
Our sources about the early life of the Quaid-i-Azam are limited mainly to the
memories of his two sisters – Fatima Jinnah (1893-1967) and Shirin Jinnah (18941980). The latter has been collected by Rizwan Ahmad in his Urdu work Quaid-i3
See, for instance, A Dictionary of Muslim Names, Salahuddin Ahmed, London, 1999.
For example, in the Introduction to the book Maq l t-e-Shiblī, Volume 7, (dated 31 October 1938), Syed
Sulaiman Nadwi spells the name Jinnah as Jīn . (Maq l t-e-Shiblī, Volume 7, Azamgarh, page 2.)
4
Azam – Ibtada’i Tees Sal 1876-1906 (Karachi: 1976), while the former is
preserved in a manuscript, called “My Brother”, carefully put together by G.
Allana.5
These two main sources disagree on some details. One such issue is whether it
was Jinnah’s father or his grandfather who moved from the ancestral village in Gujarat to
Karachi. This has some bearing on this discussion, because it indicates a difference of
opinion in the pattern of naming children in Jinnah’s family. Some facts about Jinnah’s
life are well-known, and not questioned by anybody. Bolitho clearly points out that
Jinnah’s family, though Muslim, was descended from Hindus.6 The family’s ancestral
home was in Paneli, a village in the small princely state of Gondal, in the Kathiawar
region of Gujarat (which is a state on the western coast of India.) The names of Jinnah’s
immediate ancestors on his father’s side clearly had Hindu names.
Jinnah’s grandfather’s name was Poonja Meghji, and his father’s name was
Jinnahbhai Poonja. (Riaz Ahmad spells the name Poonja with an ‘h’, as Poonjah, but
Fatima Jinnah does not – she leaves it as Poonja. Riaz Ahmad’s English book draws upon
a late Urdu work Jinn ḥ Pūnj h7 by Rizwan Ahmad, and the ‘h’ in the name is dubious.)
Poonja Meghji’s brother had been named Hirji. Jinnahbhai Poonja’s two brothers were
named Valjibhai and Nathoobhai, and his sister was Manbai. These names were clearly
Hindu in origin. We also see a pattern in the names of Jinnah’s immediate elders – each
man took the name of his father as a last name. The suffix ‘-bhai’ (meaning ‘brother’)
was usually attached to the men’s names, as an honorific. The ladies had an honorific ‘bai’, ‘lady’, attached to their names.
Jinnahbhai Poonja was married to a lady named Mithibai, who was from a village
named Dhaffa which was a few miles away from Paneli. Mithibai was from the same
Ismaili Khoja community to which Jinnah’s family belonged. The couple settled down in
Karachi (Sind), where their first son was born. Fatima Jinnah tells us the reason for the
couple’s choice of name for their son, which broke with the earlier family tradition:
There arose the question of naming the child. So far, living in Kathiawar, names
of the male members of our family had been so much akin to Hindu names. But
Sind was a Muslim province, and the children of their neighbours had Muslim
names. The two were agreed that Mohamed Ali would be an auspicious name for
their first born, and this was the name they gave him.8
Basing himself on the Urdu account of Rizwan Ahmad, Riaz Ahmad suggests that “it is
the maternal uncle Qasim Musa who proposed the name “Mahomedalli Jinnahbhai” for
the child.”9
5
Quaid-i-Azam Mohammad Ali Jinnah: The Formative Years, 1892-1920, Riaz Ahmad, Islamabad, 1986,
p. 19. (Allana and Fatima Jinnah had some disagreements, and Allana published her memoirs only after her
death. This again raises a question-mark as to the reliability of the memoirs.) It has been republished in
1987 under the editorship of Prof. Sharif Al Mujahid by Quaid-e-Azam Academy, Karachi.
6
Bolitho, op. cit., page 4.
7
(Q ’id-e ‘ żam k V lid) Jinn ḥ Pūnj h, Rizw n Ahmad, Pakistan International Publications, Karachi,
1979
8
My Brother, Fatima Jinnah, (Sharif Al Mujahid, ed.), Karachi, 1987, p. 50.
9
Riaz Ahmad, op. cit., pp. 22-23.
The suffix –bhai was dropped by Jinnah himself. In 1896, he petitioned the Bar
Council in London to change his name from “Mahomedalli Jinnahbhai” to “Mahomed
Alli Jinnah”.10
Since the name “Jinnah” dates back to the times when the family had not yet
begun to give the children Islamic names, we may surmise that Jinnah is a Gujarati Hindu
name. However Riaz Ahmad writes:
Jinnah may be derived from any of the two Arabic words – “Junnah” and
“Junaha” plural “Ajnaha” (wings) – both occur in the Quran.11
Ahmad’s claim is not bolstered with any more evidence. The similarity between the name
‘Jinnah’ and the two Arabic words are all he provides by way of proof. This hypothesis
does not explain why Jinnah’s name used to be spelled in Urdu earlier as “Jīn ”.
An Urdu biographer of Jinnah’s, Hamidullah Shah Hashemi, offers some
explanation:
“Jinn ḥ” originally was “Jīn ”. It is a Gujarati word meaning “thin”. Q ’id-e
‘ żam’s father and grandfather were very thin, and so they were nicknamed
“Jīn ”,12 and this became a part of their name. According to a widespread belief,
Jīn bh ’ī began to write his name as “Jinn ḥ” in the Roman script. In the
beginning, Q ’id-e ‘ żam was also called “Jīn ” by most people. In 1916, when
Q ’id-e ‘ ẕam came to Lucknow as president of the Muslim League, the late
Sayyid Jalib, editor of Hamdard, changed it to “Jinn ḥ”, which means “strength
of the arms”. Q ’id-e ‘ żam himself accepted this name, on account of its
significance, and added only the letter “h” to his name, as written in English.13
This explains the original Urdu spelling Jīn (which lacks both the double n, and
the final, vexatious ‘ḥ’). It also suggests that the English spelling “Jinnah” was merely the
name Jīn spelled (imperfectly) in the Roman script. If that is the case, the double ‘n’
ensured that the ‘i’ would not be pronounced as ‘-igh/-eye’, and the final ‘h’ was only to
ensure that the ‘a’ was pronounced as a long vowel. ‘Jina’ could have been misread in
English as ‘Jigh-ner’, but Jinnah would have been less ambiguous. If Hashemi’s claim is
true, it would mean that
The Arabic ‘ḥ’ in the name Jinn ḥ must be spurious, and that
10
Jinnah: The Founder of Pakistan, Saleem Qureishi (ed.), Oxford University Press, Karachi, 1998, pp. 7374.
11
Ibid., p. 22.
12
Names based on such nick-names are not uncommon, though they may seem improbable to Englishlanguage readers.
13
B b -e Qaum: Q ’id-e ‘ żam Muḥammad ‘Alī Jinn ḥ, Hamidullah Shah Hashemi, Istiqlal Press,
Lahore, 1976, pp. 14-15. The original text is given below:
Jinn ḥ dar aṣal “Jīn ” hai. “Jīn ” Gujar tī zab n ka lafż hai. Jisk ma‘anī “dubl patl ” hai. Q ’ide ‘ żam k v lid aur d d bahut dubl patl the. Is li’ unk laqab “Jīn ” paṛ gay . Jō unk n m k juzv hī
ban gay . k riv yat k muṯ biq Jīn bh ’ī roman ṯarz-e taḥrīr m ñ Jīn kō Jinn ḥ likhn lag . Q ’id-e
‘ żam kō bhī ba‘aż lōg shurū‘ m ñ Jīn hī kaht th . 1916 m ñ jab Q ’id-e ‘ żam Lakhna’ū m ñ Muslim
Līg k ṣadr kī ḥaisiyat s ’ tō sayyid j lib marḥūm, ḍīṭar “hamdard” Lakhna’ū n us ko “Jinn ḥ” ban
diy , jisk ma‘anī “quwwat-e b zū” haiñ. Khud Q ’id-e ‘ żam n is lafż kī ma‘anavīyat kō d kh kar qabūl
kar liy . Aur angrezī m ñ ṣirf “h” k iẕ fa kar liy .
the spelling “Jinn ḥ”, though accepted (in Urdu) in 1916, did not immediately
become current, for, as late as 1938, the spelling “Jīn ” was still in vogue. (See
footnote 4).
Attempts at rationalizing the Arabicized spelling of Jinnah’s name
The inconsistencies in the Urdu spelling of the name Jinnah have provoked much
commentary. The example of the English commentary of Riaz Ahmad has been
mentioned above, but it seems to be based on the Urdu writings of Rizwan Ahmad, who
has tried to rationalize the Arabizing spelling ‘Jinn ḥ’:
Jīn Pūnj h was of slight build. He was also short of stature. For this reason, he
was known as Jīn , but he had started to write his name as Jinn ḥ Pūnj h.
Whether Jīn Pūnj h changed this form of his name, or whether his Persianspeaking in-laws changed it, a change did take place. In Gujarati, “jīn ” or “jīṇ ”
means “thin”, and in Arabic “jinn ” means “arm”. Jīn Pūnj h’s wife Shīrīn Bī
and brother-in-law Q sim Mūs , and other in-laws who had come from Iran, as
part of the Agha Khan’s group, were Persian speakers. “Jīn Pūnj h” must have
made their mind think of the word “jinn ḥ” from the Holy Qur’ n, and they must
have discussed this in many ways. Jīn Pūnj h himself was an educated man.
There were Makranis and Baluchis settled in Karachi, and their language was, and
even today is, Persian, which has a big store of Arabic words in it. Besides,
Karachi had trade links with Malabar, Muscat, Zanzibar and Bandar Abbas, and
there was a constant traffic of merchants. This would also naturally have
influenced words and phrases and their meanings. Whatever the reason, Jīn
Pūnj h accepted the pronunciation “Jinn ḥ” for his name, so much so that he even
began to spell “Pūnj h” as “Pūnj h” [sic]. His signature in English [emphasis
added] can be seen in many documents.14
14
(Q ’id-e ‘ żam kē V lid) Jinn ḥ Pūnj h, Rizw n Ahmad, Pakistan International Publications, Karachi,
1979, pp. 23-24.
The Urdu text is as follows:
Jīn Pūnj h char r [?] badan k th . Unk qad chōṭa th . Is li’ Jīn kahl t th magar vah apn
n m Jinn ḥ Pūnj h likhn lag th . Jīn Pūnj h n apn n m kī yah ṣūrat khud badlī y unk sasur l k
f rsīd nōñ n is m ñ taṣarruf kiy , magar taṣarruf biharḥ l hu’ . Gujr tī zab n m ñ “jīn ” y “jīṇ ” k
ma‘an “dubl patl ” k haiñ, aur ‘arabī zab n m ñ “jinn ” k ma‘an “b zū” k haiñ. Jīn Pūnj h kī ahliya
Shīrīn Bī aur bar dar-e nisbatī Q sim Mūs aur sasur lī risht k dūsr afr d nīz gh Kh n k ḥalq k
īr n s a’ hu’ lōg, sab veh haiñ jinkī zab n qadīm f rsī thī. Un sab k zahan “Jīn Pūnj h” k n m s
Qur’ n Majīd k lafż “jinn ḥ” kī ṯaraf gay hōg aur is par ṯaraḥ ṯaraḥ s guftagū hōtī hōgī. Khud Jīn
Pūnj h paṛh likh dmī th . Kar chī m ñ bhī makr niyōñ aur balūciyōñ kī b dī maujūd thī aur unkī
zab n f rsī thī aur j bhī hai jis m ñ ‘arabī aur us s kam f rsī alf ż ka baṛ zakhīra hai. Mazīd bar n
Kar chī k tij ratī ta‘alluq M l bar s , mascat s , zanjb r s , aur Bandar abb s s j rī th aur t jirōñ kī
mad-o-raft k silsila bhī q ’im raht th . Us k bhī aṡar t alf ż aur iṣṯil ḥ t aur unk mafḥūm-o-ma‘ani k
l n-d n aur radd-o-badal par fiṯratan hōñg . Biharḥ l sabab kuch bhī ho, “Jīn Pūnj h” n apn n m k
talaffuż “Jinn ḥ” ikhtiy r kar liy , yah ñ tak kih “Pūnj h” kō bhī veh “Pūnj h” likhn lag . Dast v z t m ñ
unk angr zī dastkhaṯ d kh j sakt haiñ.
From this excerpt we can see that
the writer is acutely conscious that the name “Jīn ” is a Gujarati word meaning
“thin”, and that this was the original name which was later to become famous as
“Jinnah”. He admits that there was a deliberate change in the spelling of the name.
However, he argues that Poonja accepted the pronunciation “Jinn ḥ” for his
name, and claims that his English signatures confirm this fact. But, as we have
seen before, without diacritical marks, it is impossible to represent the two kinds
of ‘h’ in English.
Besides, if Poonja had indeed changed his first name to Jinn ḥ, early Urdu
documents would not have spelled Jinnah’s name as “Jīn ” () ﻴ ﺎ. This is also
unlikely because the name “Jinn ḥ” is not a common first name.
Also, while Jinnah Poonja’s wife and in-laws may have been able to speak
Persian, they were Gujaratis. (Even Fatima Jinnah refers to her mother not by her
(later) Persian name Shirin Bi, but by her Gujarati name Mithibai.15) It is hard to
imagine that their pronunciation of words from their own native language could
change, for their having picked up a foreign language.
Evidence from publications in Gujarati
Finally, we have a bit of clinching information from a Gujarati language source, excerpts
of which are quoted in the book “Rare Speeches and Documents of Quaid-e-Azam”:
A list of 8 questions was placed before the Quaid by a Gujarati monthly “Vismi
Sadi” published from Bombay. The Quaid gave answers in his own handwriting
and with his signature in Gujarati as under, which was published in the “VISMI
SADI” issue of May, 1916.16
The accompanying photograph shows Jinnah’s handwritten signature in Gujarati, which
shows that his name was jINaa. In the phonetic Gujarati spelling, it is impossible not to
notice that there is no final ‘h’, and no double n. The original form of the name Jinnah
was clearly “jīṇ ”, which a long ‘ī’. The retroflex “ṇ” is a sound missing in Arabic, and
this rules out an Arabic origin for the name.
Conclusions
The original form of the name Jinnah originally was “jīṇ ”. This is admitted by
Urdu scholars and confirmed through Gujarati sources.
But in transcriptions in English, the retroflex “ṇ” could not be captured, and in
transcriptions in Urdu, it was often ignored. Early Urdu spellings of the name
changed it to “Jīn ” () ﻴ ﺎ.
However, Jinnah himself seems to have used English more than Urdu, and to have
spelled his name as ‘Jinnah’. This English form of the name was later literally
transcribed into Urdu, adding a double ‘n’, and a guttural ‘ḥ’ which were both
absent from the original Gujarati name. Since short vowels are not written in Urdu
15
My Brother, Fatima Jinnah, (Sharif Al Mujahid, ed.), Karachi, 1987, p. 46.
Rare Speeches and Documents of Quaid-e-Azam, Compiled by Yahya Hashim Bawany,
First Edition, 1987, Karachi, pp. 39-40.
16
(or Arabic), the ‘i’ from the English form of the name was dropped. (This may
have begun in 1916, with a suggestion by Sayyid Jalib, editor of Hamdard.)
Finally, over time, the spelling ( ) ﺎseems to have become current, in a fauxArabic form, which obscures the Indian origin of the name.
Transliteration Scheme
The transliteration convention used in this paper is not standard. We have tried to avoid
using the usual double underdots needed to transliterate Arabic sounds without
ambiguity, since this feature is not available in standard fonts such as Times New Roman.
Our transliteration scheme is given below:
Urdu symbol
Transliteration ḥ
ﮬ
h
ث ص
ṣ
ṡ
ﭦ س
s ṭ
ط
ṯ
ﺕ
t
ز
z
ذ
ẕ
ظ ض
ẓ
ż
Acknowledgements
The author is grateful to his friend Sudhee Subrahmanya for his help in
proofreading an early draft of this paper, and for his valuable suggestions that have
helped to render this paper more readable and clear.