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ArchivesRe: Arabic use of names
in reply to a message by Sarah
As far as I remember, al- is the Arabic word for "the" and is used in three cases.
First, a lot of male Arab names start with Abd- (servant of) and finish with one of the epithets of Allah:
Abd-al-Aziz would be "a servant of the mighty one"
Abd-al-Hamid - "servant of the praiseworthy one"
(Allah has 99 or 100 epithets, so that list can get really long)
Then, it can form nicknames that denote occupation, quality, or (like Daividh said) place of origin:
al-Qudsi - from Jerusalem
al-Mansur - the victorious one (first given to Abu Jaffar - the caliph who founded Baghdad)
al-Zahra - the shining one (referring to Mohammed's daughter Fatima)
al-Sarafi - the money changer
Finally, some of the prominent people in Islam got al- in front of their names as a form of reverence. Right now I can only think of al-Hasan, Mohammed's grandson who is a Shia martyr, his brother al-Hussein, and al-Hakim (the starter of the Druze - one of the sects in Islam) but I am sure there were more in that "category."
One final note: al- does not stand for family ties. The prefixes for that are ibn/bint (son/daughter of) and abu/umm (father/mother of).
I hope that helps a bit.
First, a lot of male Arab names start with Abd- (servant of) and finish with one of the epithets of Allah:
Abd-al-Aziz would be "a servant of the mighty one"
Abd-al-Hamid - "servant of the praiseworthy one"
(Allah has 99 or 100 epithets, so that list can get really long)
Then, it can form nicknames that denote occupation, quality, or (like Daividh said) place of origin:
al-Qudsi - from Jerusalem
al-Mansur - the victorious one (first given to Abu Jaffar - the caliph who founded Baghdad)
al-Zahra - the shining one (referring to Mohammed's daughter Fatima)
al-Sarafi - the money changer
Finally, some of the prominent people in Islam got al- in front of their names as a form of reverence. Right now I can only think of al-Hasan, Mohammed's grandson who is a Shia martyr, his brother al-Hussein, and al-Hakim (the starter of the Druze - one of the sects in Islam) but I am sure there were more in that "category."
One final note: al- does not stand for family ties. The prefixes for that are ibn/bint (son/daughter of) and abu/umm (father/mother of).
I hope that helps a bit.
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