Naib a Persian word meaning representative or deputy. An officer who acted in place of another officer or who was employed to perform the duties, either in absence or on behalf of another officer is called a naib. In the later Mughal period, an officer given to act on behalf of an absentee officer was called a naib.

In Bengal a person appointed to act on behalf of an absentee subahdar or nazim, particularly from the beginning of the 18th century, was called a naib. A derivative of naib is nawab, the word was appended to the names of all subahdars from murshid quli khan (1716-1727 AD) onward. [Abdul Karim]