Iowa State University Capstones, Theses and Retrospective Theses and Dissertations Dissertations 1977 Naming in Arabic Samir A. Hawana Iowa State University Follow this and additional works at: https://lib.dr.iastate.edu/rtd Part of the English Language and Literature Commons, and the Near Eastern Languages and Societies Commons Recommended Citation Hawana, Samir A., "Naming in Arabic" (1977). Retrospective Theses and Dissertations. 82. https://lib.dr.iastate.edu/rtd/82 This Thesis is brought to you for free and open access by the Iowa State University Capstones, Theses and Dissertations at Iowa State University Digital Repository. It has been accepted for inclusion in Retrospective Theses and Dissertations by an authorized administrator of Iowa State University Digital Repository. For more information, please contact [email protected]. Naming in Arabic by Samir A. Hawana A Thesis Submitted to the Graduate Faculty in Partial Fulfillment of The Requirements for the Degree of MASTER OF ARTS Major: English Iowa State University Ames, Iowa 1977 ii TABLE OF CONTENTS Page CHAPTER I. INTRODUCTION 1 CHAPTER II. WHAT'S IN A NAME? 6 CHAPTER III. RELIGIOUS NAMES 11 CHAPTER IV. NAMING IN ARABIC 15 FOOTNOTES 27 BIBLIOGRAPHY 30 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS 32 APPENDIX 33 1 CHAPTER I. INTRODUCTION When Benjamin L. Whorf said that speech is the best show 1 man ever puts on, he could have modified his statement by adding that personal names are the cleverest manifestations of that show. Many of us tend to accept our names as bestowed by our parents and exert little effort, if any, to understand their significance or even their literal meaning. The writer's - 2 wife has a rather rhythmical name, Maha, and many friends expressed their admiration of its musical tone. When asked about the meaning of her name, Maha will always answer "it means the eyes of the wild cow." It was a surprise to her husband to find out that Maha, in Arabic, means simply "the wild cow. 11 Such instances of misunderstanding of one's own name lead the writer to assume a widespread lack of awareness on this topic. As a fully bilingual Arab student in the United States, the writer has encountered many curious questions by Ameri- can colleagues about the meaning of different personal names. Clearly, the topic is worth exploring in order to add to the body of knowledge about Arabic and the Arabs. The old Arabic saying "strive to have a part of your name," suggests that in the Arab tradition personal names are projected attributes desired for the offspring when the parents bestow the names on their children. Names are im- 2 portant. Psychologists can look at a name as a source for exploring the person's family background since names are auspicious. In old China, for example, the child was given a name that connoted a grand meaning or attribute. But the name was kept secret and replaced by another common name until the child was old enough not to be affected by the "evil eye." Sociologists and anthropologists can benefit in studying personal names and their significance within the context of a given culture. In the case of the Arab culture the pious say "if you have a hundred sons, call them all Mu\lammad." Hence, this name is the most common name in the Islamic world. The name of the Prophet is an indicator of a degree of religiousness in that part of the world, or of the salient effect of religion on that culture, a theme which preoccupies sociology and other kindred disciplines. Names are labels of differentiation and identification. One always starts, when introducing himself, by stating his name. The family name, where it exists, might give a good indication of locations, trades, and occupations. A name may often be a clue to the nationality, religion, or race of its bearer. If a researcher is interested in Islam and/ or Arab culture he can reach important references concerning these topics by studying the ninety-nine divine names of God in Arabic and their usage as personal names. 3 Before probing into this subject a brief linguistic 3 description of Arabic is in order. The Arabic language is a semitic language used by more than one hundred million people in what is known as the Arab World (all of North Africa, most of the Arabian peninsula, and parts of the Middle East). Classical Arabic, the language of the Qur·an, is the religious language of Moslems and is uniform throughout the Arabic speaking world since the Qur·an has maintained only one version. Encyclo­ 4 paedia Britannica reports that "the earliest known written Arabic is a royal funerary inscription dating from AD 328." Arabic has six vowels, three long and three short ([a] ; [i] ; [u] ; -- ['aJ ; ['1] ; [u] ) . As a rule, words begin with a single consonant followed by a vowel, and usually long vowels are followed by a single consonant. An Arabic word is composed of two parts: the root (three consonants) which provides the lexical meaning of the word and the pattern (vowels) which gives its grammatical meaning. Hence the consonants "sh-r-b" combined with [-[a]-['a]-) gives sharab "a drink" and with (-[a]-[i]-) becomes sharib "one who drinks." Arabic uses grammatical markers extensively to denote the subject, object, and tense. Affixes are used for similar purposes as the markers as well as for denoting pronouns, definite articles, and prepositions. Dual form 4 and gender differentiation are not used for the first person. Gender differentiation is not found in the second person. The cases in which an Arabic noun appears are three: nomina­ tive, genitive, and accusative. Feminine can be generated usually from any word by adding an open, long [-a] at the end written as t (~), or h (~). Hence Zaki (a male's name) becomes zakiya (a female's name). Colloquial Arabic has many dialects, usually mutua1ly comprehensible. The chief dialect groups are those of Arabia, Egypt, North Africa, and the Fertile Crescent. The increase of literacy rate in the Arab world has helped to make the influence of the classical Arabic more apparent and more tangible. Arabic and Islam are so much tangled together that it is impossible to deal with one without dealing with the other. As noted above, Arabic is the language of the Qur"an. Except for the heart of Arabia, the rest of the region was introduced to Arabic through Islam. Hence, the synonymity is always taken for granted in the Arab world. Even in the Moslem, non-Arabic speaking regions, Arabic is the religious language. Regardless of the native tongue of the Moslem, he or she is expected to pray and read the Qur"an in Arabic. Needless to say, however, Islam does not render all its followers conversant in Arabic. Nor does it confine the 5 understanding of Islam to native speakers. Personal names derived from the Qur"an are used by all types of Moslems, whether or not they speak Arabic. Likewise all Moslems place a high importance on personal names, especially those which express the divine attributes of God. -----------------------------~--- --~ 6 CHAPTER II. WHAT'S IN A NAME?S Before dealing in details with the subject of personal names in Arabic, it is proper to ponder some aspects of the most common theories about naming in general. Juliet of Capulet, lamenting her lover's name, asked Romeo: 'Tis but thy name that is my enemy; Thou art thyself, though not a Montague. What's Montague? It is nor hand, nor foot, nor arm, nor face, nor any other part Belonging to a man. 0, be some other name! What's in a name?6 Shakespeare summed up the issue of names and their relation- ship to the future or fate of their bearers in the previous quotation. Perhaps the most controversial interpretation of names has been John S. Mill's. Personal names, Mill contended, are signs, i.e., intentional manifestations of sounds or letters. He insisted that names are meaningless or non- connotative marks. They only help distinguish individuals as a mark of a chalk would distinguish a house. He said: When we predicate of anything its proper name, when we say, pointing to a man, this is Brown or Smith, or pointing to a city, that is a York, we do not merely by so doing convey to the reader any information about them, except that they are their names.7 One need only examine Johns. Mill's name per se to dis- cover that his interpretation of names falls short of the 7 mark. The name John suggests that its bearer is not by any means a Moslem or a Hindu. It does, however, indicate a rather high probability of being a Christian. The surname Mill may shed light on his ancestral occupation or location. Hence, names may indicate several things (religion, occupa- tion, and even race) . Some names connote the place of origin. A vivid example would be Muldauer which carries the name of a region now part of the Soviet Union, Moldavia. Furthermore, it shows that persons with this surname have some relation to German speaking countries, as Muldauer in German means "one who is from Moldavia." So is the case with the Arabic surname Al-Misri which means literally • "the Egyptian." Johns. Mill was not the only logician who concluded that names are meaningless. Frege, Russell, and Strawson 8 also subscribed to this belief. Renowned linguists, however, have endorsed a different point of view. A. Gardiner argues that personal names are words and not noises. He writes, "A proper name is a word, and being a word partakes of the fundamental two­ 9 sidedness of words as possessing both sound and meaning." H.