Arabic name

Common naming practices

Arab Muslim

A common name-form among Arab Muslims is the prefix ʿabd (عبد, "servant", "worshipper") combined with the word for God (Allah), or with one of the epithets of God. For example,

• Abdullah (عبدالله "servant of God"),
• Abdulaziz (عبدالعزيز "servant of the Exalted")
• Abdulrahman (عبدالرحمن "servant of the Most Merciful")

As a mark of deference, ʿAbd is usually not conjoined with the prophet's names. Nonetheless, such names are accepted in some areas. Its use is not exclusive to Muslims and throughout all Arab countries, the name Abdul-Massih, (عبدالمسيح "servant of Christ"), is a common Christian last name.

Converts to Islam may often continue using the native non-Arabic non-Islamic names that are without any polytheistic connotation, or association.

Arab Christian

Generally, Arab Christians have names indistinguishable from Muslims, with the exception of some explicitly Islamic names such as Muhammad, which are not usually borne by Christians. Some common Christian names are:

• Arabic versions of Christian names, e.g. saints' names: Buṭrus (بطرس) for Peter, Boulos (بولس) for Paul.
• Names of Greek, Armenian, and Aramaic origin, which are also used by ethnically non-Arab Christians such as Armenians, Assyrians, or Copts.
• Use of European names, especially French and English names. This is a recent convention for Christian Arabs, which mainly started with the British and French mandates in the Levant. Examples include George Habash, Michel Aflaq, and Charles Helou.
• Names in honor of Jesus Christ:

ʿAbd Yasuʿ (masc. ) / Amat Yasuʿ (fem.) ("Servant of Jesus")

ʿAbd al-Masiḥ (masc.) / Amat al-Masiḥ (fem.) ("Servant of the Messiah")

Derivations of Maseeḥ ("Messiah"): Masūḥun ("Most Anointed"), Amsāḥ ("More Anointed"), Mamsūḥ "Anointed" and Musayḥ "Infant Christ". The root, M-S-Ḥ, means "to anoint" (as in masah) and is cognate to the Hebrew Mashiah.

Dynastic or family name

Some people, especially in the Arabian Peninsula, when descendant of a famous ancestor, start their last name with Āl "family, clan" (آل), like the House of Saud ﺁل سعود Āl Suʻūd or . Āl is distinct from the definite article (ال). If a reliably-sourced version of the Arabic spelling includes آل (as a separate graphic word), then this is not a case of the definite article, so Al (capitalised and followed by a space, not a hyphen) should be used. Ahl, which has a similar meaning, is sometimes used and should be used if the Arabic spelling is أهل.

Dynasty membership alone does not necessarily imply that the dynastic آل is used – e.g. Bashar al-Assad.

Example

محمد بن سلمان بن أمین الفارسي
Muḥammad ibn Salmān ibn Amīn al-Fārisī

Ism – Muḥammad (proper name, lit. 'praised')

Nasab – Salmān (father's name, lit. 'secure')

Nasab – Amīn (grandfather's name, lit. 'trustworthy')

Nisbah – al-Fārisī (lit. 'the Persian').

"Muḥammad, son of Salmān, son of Amīn, the Persian"

This person would simply be referred to as "Muḥammad" or by his kunya, which relates him to his first-born son, e.g. Abū Karīm "father of Karīm". To signify respect or to specify which Muḥammad one is speaking about, the name could be lengthened to the extent necessary or desired.

Common mistakes

Non-Arabic speakers often make these mistakes:

• Separating "the X of Y" word combinations (see iḍāfah):
  • With "Abdul": Arabic names may be written "Abdul (something)", but "Abdul" means "servant of the" or "follower of the" and is not, by itself, a name. Thus for example, to address Abdul-Rahman bin Omar al-Ahmad by his given name, one says "Abdul-Rahman", not merely "Abdul". If he introduces himself as "Abdul-Rahman" (which means "the servant of the Merciful"), one does not say "Mr. Rahman" (as "Rahman" is not a family name but part of his theophoric personal name); instead it would be Mr. al-Ahmad, the latter being the family name. Therefore, it is better to write "Abdul Rahman" as "abdu r-rahmān" and "abdul ghafār" as "abdu l-ghafār" .
  • People not familiar with Arabic sandhi in iḍāfah: Habībullāh = "beloved (Habīb) of God (Allāh)"; here a person may in error report the man's name as "forename Habib, surname Ullah". Likewise, people may confuse a name such as Jalālu-d-dīn ("The majesty of the religion") as being "Jalal Uddin", or "Mr. Uddin", when "Uddin" is not a surname, but the second half of a two-word name (the desinence -u of the construct state nominative, plus the article, appearing as -d-, plus the genitive dīn[i]). To add to the confusion, some immigrants to Western countries have adopted Uddin as a surname, although it is grammatically incorrect in Arabic outside the context of the associated "first name". Even Indian Muslims commit the same error. If a person's name is Abd-ul-Rahim ("servant of the Merciful"), others may call him Mr. Abdul ("servant of the") which would sound quite odd to a native speaker of Arabic.
• Not distinguishing ʻalāʾ from Allah: Some Arabic names include the Arabic word ʻalāʾ (علاء "nobility"). Here, ⟨ʻ⟩ represents the ayin, a voiced pharyngeal fricative, ⟨ʾ⟩ represents the hamza, a glottal stop, and ⟨l⟩ is spelled and pronounced at ordinary length, /l/. In Allāh, the l is written twice (⟨ll⟩) and pronounced twice as long (a geminate), as /l/ or /ll/. In Arabic pronunciation, ʻalāʾ and Allāh are clearly different. But Europeans, Iranians, and Indians may not pronounce some Arabic sounds as a native Arabic speaker would, and thus tend to pronounce them identically. For example, the name ʻAlāʾ al-dīn (Aladdin, "the Nobility of the Faith") is sometimes misspelled as Allāh al-dīn by Europeans and Indians. There is another name ʻAlaʾ-Allah (Aliullah, "the Nobility of God"), which uses both distinctly. Therefore, the name "علاء" must be written in Latin in the form of "Halāʾ " or "Halaa'e" to differentiate it between "Allāh" the name of God in Arabic, and also the female name آلاء "Ālāʾ " (Alaa'e) Which means "blessings" (God's blessings).
• Taking bin or ibn for a middle name: As stated above, these words indicate the order of the family chain. English-speakers often confuse them with middle names, especially when they are written as "Ben", as it is the case in some countries. For example, Sami Ben Ahmed would be mistakenly addressed as Mr. Ben Ahmed. To correctly address the person, one should use Mr. Sami or Mr. Sami Ben Ahmed.
• Grammar: As between all languages, there are differences between Arabic grammar and the grammar of other languages. Arabic forms noun compounds in the opposite order from Indo-Iranian languages, for example. During the war in Afghanistan in 2002, a BBC team found in Kabul an internally displaced person whose name they stated as "Allah Muhammad". This may be a misspelling for ʻalāʾ, for if not, by the rules of Arabic grammar, this name means "the Allah who belongs to Muhammad", which, assuming the person is an Arabic speaking Muslim would be unacceptable religiously. However, by the rules of Iranian languages and most languages of India, this name does mean "Muhammad who belongs to Allah", being the equivalent of the Arabic "Muhammadullah". Most Afghans speak Iranian languages. Such Perso-Arab or Indo-Arab multilingual compound names are not uncommon in Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Iran, Pakistan and Tajikistan. There is, for example, the Punjabi name Allah-Ditta which joins the Arabic Allah with the Punjabi Ditta "given".

Arab family naming convention

Conventionally, in Arab culture, as in many parts of the world, a person's ancestry and family name are very important. An example is explained below.

Assume a man is called Saleh ibn Tariq ibn Khalid al-Fulan.

• Saleh is his personal name, and the one that his family and friends would call him by.
• ibn and bin translates as "son of", so Tariq is Saleh's father's name.
• ibn Khalid means that Tariq is the son of Khalid, making Khalid the paternal grandfather of Saleh.
• al-Fulan would be Saleh's family name.

Hence, Saleh ibn Tariq ibn Khalid al-Fulan translates as "Saleh, son of Tariq, son of Khalid; who is of the family of al-Fulan."

The Arabic for "daughter of" is bint. A woman with the name Fatimah bint Abdullah ibn Omar al-Rashid translates as "Fatimah, daughter of Abdullah, son of Omar; who is of the family al-Rashid."

In this case, ibn and bint are included in the official naming. Most Arab countries today, however, do not use 'ibn' and 'bint' in their naming system. If Saleh were an Egyptian, he would be called Saleh Tariq Khalid al-Fulan and Fatimah would be Fatimah Abdullah Omar al-Rashid.

If Saleh marries a wife (who would keep her own maiden, family, and surnames), their children will take Saleh's family name. Therefore, their son Mohammed would be called Mohammed ibn Saleh ibn Tariq al-Fulan, not Mohammed ibn Saleh ibn Tariq ibn Khalid al-Fulan (too long).

However, not all Arab countries use the name in its full length, but conventionally use two- and three-word names, and sometimes four-word names in official or legal matters. Thus, the first name is the personal name, the middle name is the father's name, and the last name is the father's family name.

Biblical names and their Arabic equivalent

The Arabic names listed below are used in the Arab world with correspondent Hebrew, English, Syriac and Greek equivalents in many cases. Most are derived from Syriac transliterations of the Hebrew Bible.

• The popular romanization of the Arabized and Hebrew names are written first, then the standardized romanization are written in oblique. Arabized names may have variants.
• If a literal Arabic translation of a name exists, it will be placed after the final standardized romanization.
• If an Arabic correlation is ambiguous, (?) will be placed following the name in question.
• El, the Hebrew word for strength/might or deity, is usually represented as īl in Arabic, although it carries no meaning in classical and modern Arabic. The only exception is its usage in the Iraqi Arabic.

Some names might have different translations based on religious context:

• There are two versions of the name Jesus: Yasuʿ (يَسُوع) is the Christian version, as used in the Bible, while ʿĪsa (عِيسَى) is the Muslim version, as used in the Qur'an.

  Similarly, there are two versions of the name John: Yuḥannā (يُوحَنَّا) is the Christian version, while Yaḥya (يَحْيَى) is the Muslim version. They have different triconsonantal roots: Ḥ-N-N ("grace") vs Ḥ-Y-Y ("life"). Yuḥannā is cognate with the original Hebrew Yôḥānān (יוֹחָנָן). Note that Yuḥannā may refer to either John the Baptist or John the Apostle, whereas Yaḥya refers specifically to John the Baptist.

Arabic names in English

Often Arabic names can be spelled multiple ways in English, and sometimes a person's name may be treated inconsistently. For example, the American boxer Muhammad Ali and the crown prince of Saudi Arabia Mohammed bin Salman share the same name, but their English spellings differ.

Indexing

According to the Chicago Manual of Style, Arabic names are indexed by their surnames. Names may be alphabetized under Abu, Abd and ibn, while names are not alphabetized under al- and el- and are instead alphabetized under the following element.