Throughout the Quran, there are two modes of reference to the Prophet Muhammad: nominal and titular. With only four instances, nominal references to the Prophet occur with two names, viz. Ahmad, mentioned only once, and Muhammad, mentioned three times. On the other hand, there are many more titular references to his prophetic status. Whereas in the former, nominal mode of reference the Prophet is identified in person, the latter mode focuses on his prophetic mission and status. Despite the universal claim of Brown & Levinson’s Politeness Principle to account for such honorific phenomena, it falls short of giving a reliable justification of the very phenomena under study. Based on two Islamic articles of faith, the present paper proposes a tentative hypothesis to compensate for such a shortcoming.