In these first days at the school, one my usual tasks is to manage the personal files for each student, arranging those who just joined this year. After checking the names and surnames of the students before entering their files in the archive, I could noticed, in certain cases, the remarkable length of some of them. That leaded me to investigate a bit more about the interesting world of the Arabic onomastics.
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| The 99 names of Alah, in the dome of the Grand Mosque of Kuwait |
Abdullah Ahmed Mohammed Faisal Ali Abdul Aziz Al-Mubarak. This is a fictitious example of what any name could be in the Arabic countries. Nowadays, it is true that the way to name a person became more simple, using just a first name and a family name (called nisbah), but traditionally the name of a person also includes the name of the father, the grandfather’s and, sometimes, even the great-grandfather’s and other previous generations. Technically, each of these names should be followed of the particles ibn (“son”) or bint (“daughter”), but in most of the Arabic countries they are omitted.
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| Monument of the Cordoban poet and philosopher, Ibn Hazm (source: Wikipedia) |
Sometimes, there is a word preceding the name, called kunya, expressing respect and honor towards other person. Some of the most common are Abu (“father”), Umm (“mother”) or Abdul (“servant”). One of the most frequent mistakes we commit in Western countries is separating the kunya from its related name, considering it as a name apart. For example, if we call someone just Abu, it would be like if we call him “someone’s father”, it wouldn’t make sense without the posterior name.
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| Kareem Abdul (servant of) Jabbar (source: Pinterest) |
This way of naming could explain why, since I am here in Kuwait, every time that someone submits an official document with my name, most of the times they use just Francisco and my second surname (in Spain we have two surnames), assuming that it is my family name. My second name (I have a composed name) and my first surname usually are omitted since, possibly, they can be considered as my father’s and my grandfather’s name. Do you have any experience like that with your name being in an Arabic speaker country?
See you next time!
Yes it seems that these names are used often to denote and in respect of lineage. Which is an interesting feature of Arab culture that very much traditional and historical. In America, matters are done in a more expedient and business sense—categorizes, organizing, and also differentiating—since America was founded on constitutional principles respecting ones individuality. Therefore it wouldn’t be practical or expedient in America to have so many similar names and prefixes to names such as Al-, or Abdul-, or Ibn
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