Somali male names draw from the Somali language and Islamic Arabic. A common male pattern is the theophoric prefix Abdi- (from Arabic Abd, “servant of”), joined to one of the divine epithets, as in Abdirahmaan or its Somali-orthography form Abdiraxmaan (x = kh). Traditional naming lists a man’s given name followed by his father’s and grandfather’s given names, rather than a fixed family surname. Masculine endings such as -aan, -e, and -i are frequent.

Modern use remains Arabic-influenced, with Latin-script spellings standard and shortened forms like Abdi common. Examples include Abdi, Abdirahmaan, Abdiraxmaan, Jama, Hamse, Hirsi, Hersi, Barre, Nurdin, and Sharmarke.