In Genesis, what was Noah’s wife called in the Ark story?

The story behind the answer

In Genesis, Noah’s wife is unnamed in the Ark story.

Genesis refers to “Noah, and Noah’s sons, and Noah’s wife, and the wives of his sons” entering the ark, but it does not provide Noah’s wife with a personal name. The same unnamed description appears when the family leaves the ark after the waters recede.

Later Jewish, Christian, and Islamic traditions supplied names or identifications for Noah’s wife. One widely known later tradition calls her Naamah, based on a figure mentioned elsewhere in Genesis, but the biblical Ark narrative does not explicitly make that identification. Other traditions use different names.

This is why “she is unnamed” is the precise answer for the Genesis account. It distinguishes the text itself from later traditions and from popular retellings that present a specific name as though it appeared in the original flood narrative.

Source: Wikipedia · fact-checked Oct. 2026

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