Abdulkarim

Meaning and root

al-Karīm is from k-r-m (ك-ر-م), a root the lexicographers describe along two joined lines. The first is giving: karam is the opposite of meanness, and the karīm is the open-handed one whose giving does not run out. The second is worth: a thing is said to be karīm when it is precious and highly valued, and karāʾim al-māl are the choicest possessions their owner is reluctant to part with. A man called karīm is being given both at once — generous in hand, of high stock in origin.

Why the second sense matters here

The second line of the root is the one genealogy runs on. When the sources say a man is karīm al-nasab or karīm al-muḥtid, they are not speaking figuratively about his generosity; they are using the root's older sense of a thing being of choice quality. The same material therefore serves two chapters — conduct and descent — and a reader who knows only the modern 'generous' will misread the phrase every time it appears in a genealogical text.

The pattern

ʿAbd is a bound first element: it is a genitive construct that requires a following word to complete it, and it does not stand alone. In the lexicon ʿabd is the owned servant, and a person is called ʿabd of God in the sense of being His creature. In the naming practice of the Islamic period the second word is a name of God or an attribute of His, and because the first word is identical across the whole family it distinguishes nothing — the meaning of each of these names sits entirely in the second element. Abdulkarim, Abdulaziz and Abdullatif share a first word and differ completely in the second.

An older layer of the same construction

The construction itself is older than that restriction. Pre-Islamic Arabs formed names on the same shape with something other than a divine name in second place: in the Qurashī genealogy as the genealogists set it out, ʿAbd Manāf, ʿAbd Shams and ʿAbd al-Dār all appear. The morphology is one and the same; what changed was what stood in the second position. This is worth knowing for reading a chain of names, where these forms are met constantly.

Writing

In Arabic the two words are written joined. The Latin forms (Abdulkarim, Abdul Karim, ʿAbd al-Karīm) are variants of transliteration, not of name, and 'Abdul' on its own is not a name at all.