An Arabic name related to hidaya, meaning guidance or right direction.
Hedaya (هداية, also spelled Hidaya or Hidayah) is an Arabic name of profound spiritual significance, meaning guidance, the right path, or divine direction. In Islamic theological vocabulary, "hidaya" is one of the most important concepts in the faith — it refers specifically to the guidance that Allah provides to human beings, the capacity to recognize truth and walk the straight path ("sirat al-mustaqim"). To name a child Hedaya is to invoke a blessing of lifelong divine direction, a wish that the child will always find their way toward what is right and true.
The name also carries significant historical weight in Islamic scholarship. Al-Hidaya ("The Guidance") is the title of a monumental twelfth-century legal text by the Hanafi jurist Burhan al-Din al-Marghinani, which became one of the most studied works of Islamic jurisprudence across Central Asia, the Ottoman Empire, South Asia, and beyond. The British colonial courts in India famously relied on an English translation of al-Hidaya as a guide to Muslim personal law.
The name thus sits at the intersection of personal piety and intellectual tradition. Hedaya is used across Arabic-speaking communities in North Africa and the Middle East, as well as in Muslim communities in East Africa (particularly among Swahili-speaking populations), South Asia, and the global diaspora. It can be given to both boys and girls, though it tends feminine in many communities. In recent decades it has traveled into Western naming registers through Muslim immigrant families, where its meaning — guidance — resonates as a universal parental aspiration regardless of religious tradition.