Arabic naming system for male people in the XIXth century and before

A quick overview of the various parts of Arabic/Islamic male names (people not horses) during and before the XIXth century may help. A typical name was constituted of different parts:

The kinya: Abu Amin, “father of Amin”, people were referred as fathers of their firstborn son; if they did not have sons, they were still referred to as fathers of a hypothetical son carrying their own father’s first name. Example: your name is Ahmed, your father’s name is Ali, you don’t have a son, but your kinya would still be “Abu Ali”.

The laqab: that’s the title: Agha, Pasha, Bey, Zadah, Effendi, Sheykh, Amir, etc.

The ism: that’s the first name, Mohammed, Ahmed, Ali, Hussayn, etc. Sometimes in official documents or formal correspondence, the name of one’s father and grand father (and so on) would be included too: Mohammed ibn (son of) Ali ibn (son of) Ahmed ibn …. etc.

The nisba: where the person came from, or resided last, or was born: al-Halabi (from Aleppo), al-Masri (from Cairo), al-Qudsi (from Jerusalem); one could have more than one, if for instance, they were born in one place, but resided in another, then moved to a third. This was regardless of “citizenship” — the notion did not exist yet.

The mihna: the person’s profession: al-Haddad (the smith), al-Sayigh (the jeweler), al-Qadi (the judge), etc. It could also be a descriptive: the lame (al-A’raj), the one-eyed (al-Aawaar), etc.

When western colonial administrations that controled Middle Eastern and Northern African countries standardized civil registries in the XIXth and early XXth centuries, they turned people’s mihna and the nisba and sometimes the kinya too, into the last names as they are understood in the West. The ism stayed at the first name. The father’s and grandfathers’ names became the middle names as understood in the West (e.g., my middle name on my ID is Salim, but it’s actually my father’s name, and it’s really “the name in the middle” on the ID, between my first name and my last name. The rest was dropped from civil registries, except in a few cases (e.g., my brother, who retains the title of Shaykh on his ID, I had mine removed).

Socialist revolutionary regimes that came to power in the Middle East and North Africa around the middle of the XXth century (Egypt, Iraq, Yemen, etc but not Saudi Arabia or Jordan for example) believed that the Western naming system entrenched social and economic inequalities, and tried to rid civil registries of last names. They came up with a new naming system where one’s full name was the first name, the father’s name, the grandfather’s name and sometimes the great-grandfather name. That system was unclear about which name was one’s last name: was it one’s father’s name? one’s grandfather’s name? great-grandfather? People used these names interchangeably as their last names. Paternal cousins could have different last names. The system created hundreds of thousands of people with the same names. How many many “Mohammed Husayn Ahmed” out there? People had to go even further back with names of paternal ancestors to differiate themselves from homonyms.

So an Arabic/Islamic name looked like this in the XIXth century: Muhammad, father of Amin, Bey, from Aleppo = Muhammad Abu Amin Bey al-Halabi. The nisba came last, and the title before it. The order of the two other parts (the ism and the kinya) did not matter.

If I were to apply that old XIXth century naming system to myself today, it would look something like: Abu Salim Edouard ibn Salim ibn Edouard ibn al-Dahdah al-Amriki al-Lubnani: Father of Salim, Edouard, son of Salim, son of Edouard, son of the “chubby one”( ibn al-Dahdah), from America (al-Amriki), from Lebanon (al-Lubnani). It’s long, but it’s informative.

If I were to apply the “socialist” naming system to myself, I would be Edouard Salim, or Edouard Edouard (funny).