Zuleyka is an Arabic-associated form of Zulaykha, a traditional name often interpreted as "brilliant beauty."
Zuleyka — also spelled Zuleika or Zulaykha — is a name of Persian and Arabic origin steeped in one of literature's most enduring love stories. In Islamic tradition and Persian poetry, Zulaykha is the name given to the wife of Potiphar, the Egyptian official who purchased Joseph (Yusuf) as a slave. Her passionate, ill-fated love for the young prophet became the subject of Jami's masterpiece "Yusuf and Zulaykha" (1483), a Sufi allegorical poem in which her obsessive earthly love is ultimately transformed into divine love for God — one of Persian literature's most exquisite explorations of desire, redemption, and the soul's longing for the infinite.
The name's meaning is debated but often given as "brilliant beauty" or simply "fair one," and in Ottoman Turkish, Persian, and Arabic literary culture, Zulaykha became a byword for consuming romantic devotion. Max Beerbohm borrowed the spelling Zuleika for his 1911 satirical novel "Zuleika Dobson," in which a beautiful young woman causes every Oxford undergraduate to die for love of her — a comic inversion of the original myth's spiritual gravity. Zuleyka with the -yka ending is a Latinized or Spanish-influenced variant found particularly in Latin America and among Spanish-speaking communities with ties to Islamic cultural heritage or simply drawn to the name's exotic music.
Zuleyka Rivera notably held the Miss Universe title in 2006, bringing the name to global attention. It remains a rare, radiant choice — carrying centuries of poetry, a beauty queen's crown, and the weight of one of the world's great unrequited love stories.