i wonder if yall realize arabs have five different name structures
english only has two (given name + surname) but arabic. has five. CRAZY
i wanna ramble so excuse me (it’s below the cut)
let’s say for the sake of this explanation, there’s a guy called ahmad al-tamimi who’s a doctor. his father is called mustafa and mustafa’s father is called adel (this is important bc in the arab world, a person’s full name is patrilineal)
ahmad’s ism is his given name: ahmad. (most given names in arabic are nouns or adjectives, for example the name “aisha” literally means “living” and “amal” is the arabic word for “hope”. layla means “night”, basma means smile, you get the picture)
then there’s the nasab, which shows someone’s patrilineal ancestry. ahmad’s nasab would be ahmad bin mustafa bin adel. you see this a lot with the sahaba (companions of the prophet), such as:
khalid ibn al-walid, uthman ibn affan, ali ibn abi talib, omar ibn al-khattab, zaid ibn harith, abdullah bin abbas, khadijah bint kuwaylid, fatimah bint muhammad, etc
(for context, ibn/bin means “son of”, and bint means “daughter of”)
in all these examples, it shows a persons name and their father’s name because (and i cannot stress this enough) a person’s ancestry is so so important in islam. even when you adopt someone, you can’t change their last name or add your line to their nasab because we believe each person has the right to know their family history and that it cannot be modified. i can trace my family back to the early 19th century bc of this purely from the records i’ve seen, and i’m sure there are many more records that i haven’t seen
then there’s the laqab, which is essentially a nickname or a moniker—this could be used to describe the person’s personality (omar (ra) was given the laqab “al-farouq” (the distinguisher) by muhammad pbuh because of omar’s ability to distinguish right from wrong)
this was less common in ancient arabia but isnt used as much anymore
then theres the kunya, which is similar to but different from the laqab, in that it usually describes a person’s relation to something. when i was younger my siblings and cousins used to call me “umm al-lasaan” (mother of the tongue) bc i was talkative. you could also call a woman “umm mohammad” (mother of mohammad) if their firstborn is called mohammad.
(umm means “mother of”, “abu” means “father of)
using ahmad’s example, i could call his father mustafa “abu ahmad” (father of ahmad) since thats his relation to something. my favorite example of the kunya is abdulrahman ibn sakhr, better known as “abu huraira” (father of a kitten) because of his love of cats.
and then finally theres the nisbah, or a last name. arabs dont really have last names, per se, we have denonyms that denote which clan we’re from. someone who’s from the clan of banu hashim would be called “al-hashimi” (the one from hashim). in this case, ahmad’s clan is banu tamim, therefore his nisbah is “al-tamimi” (the one from tamim)
it doesnt always work this way, tho. i once knew a lebanese girl whos last name was “al-masri” (the one from egypt) which simply means that someone up her family line migrated from egypt to lebanon. theres also one of my favorite musicians, majid al-mohandis, who used his engineering degree to give himself the last name al-mohandis (the engineer). in ahmad’s case, he could call himself al-tabib (the doctor) and it wouldnt really be wrong
