The story of the name
The cloak, and the command
He ﷺ was walking when the pause in revelation ended: the angel he had first seen at Hira now seated on a throne between heaven and earth, filling the horizon. He hurried home with the words of that first day — cover me, cover me (daththiruni, daththiruni) — and they covered him. And into the covering came the address that ended the break: O you who covers himself (ya ayyuha al-muddaththir) — arise and warn*, and magnify your Lord, and purify your garments, and abandon impurity* (Surah al-Muddaththir, 74:1–5). Jabir ibn Abdullah (RA) preserved the Prophet's ﷺ own account of the scene in the Sahih (Bukhari 4922; Muslim, Kitab al-Iman).
The hinge of the mission
The commentators read al-Muzzammil and al-Muddaththir as a matched pair — two addresses to a wrapped man, with opposite vectors. The first points inward: stay wrapped, stand in the night, recite. The second points outward: get up. Warn. Magnify your Lord, purify your garments (Surah al-Muddaththir, 74:3–4). Between the two cloaks, private devotion became public mission — and the scholars mark Surah al-Muddaththir, 74:2 as the moment the world's transformation was formally assigned: arise is the whole history of the da'wah in one imperative.
Read together, the opening five verses form a complete program in miniature: warn people, magnify Allah, purify yourself, and leave idolatry behind. Da'wah, tawhid, purification, and the rejection of shirk — the whole shape of the mission, given in four simple commands.
An address, carried as a name
Mudathir and its spelling variations have been used to name boys for generations. The name is popular across South Asia, given out of reverence for the Prophet ﷺ. As for the name itself, whether a Qur'anic address to the Prophet ﷺ is formally counted among his names is the standing editorial question this entry shares with the other names in this group.
To carry this name
To carry this name is to accept the second address after the first: comforted in order to be commissioned, wrapped in order to rise. It is to magnify Allah before you address anyone, to purify yourself before you correct anyone, and to know that arise and warn is the cloak's other side.