Arabic form of Gabriel, from Hebrew meaning 'God is my strength.'
Jibreel is the Arabic form of Gabriel, the archangel whose name derives from the Hebrew Gavri'el, meaning "God is my strength" or "strong man of God." In Islamic theology, Jibreel occupies a position of supreme importance: he is the angel of revelation, the divine intermediary who transmitted the words of the Quran to the Prophet Muhammad over a period of twenty-three years. This role — described vividly in the Quran and elaborated in the hadith — gives Jibreel a sacred weight in Islamic tradition that goes beyond the already considerable reverence he enjoys in Judaism and Christianity as the angel who visited Daniel, announced the birth of John the Baptist, and appeared to Mary.
The Arabic rendering Jibreel preserves phonetic patterns distinct from the Hebrew and Greek lineage that produced Gabriel in Western languages, and the name has been used among Muslim families for centuries precisely because of its direct Quranic resonance. Classical Islamic literature and poetry invoke Jibreel frequently as a symbol of divine communication and the descent of sacred knowledge — to name a son Jibreel is to invoke that luminous tradition of spiritual transmission. In modern usage, Jibreel appears among Muslim communities worldwide, from West Africa to Southeast Asia to the diaspora communities of Europe and North America.
It sits in interesting tension with Jibril, an alternative transliteration that drops the doubled-e, and with Gabriel, which some Muslim families also use given its shared angelic identity. Jibreel as a spelling tends to be preferred by families who want the name's Islamic identity to be immediately legible, while carrying the full resonance of one of the most consequential figures in Abrahamic religious history.