Saad

Meaning and root

From s-ʿ-d (س-ع-د). In *Lisān al-ʿArab* *al-saʿd* is the opposite of *al-naḥs*, ill fortune, and *al-saʿāda* the opposite of *al-shaqāwa*. The Arabs gave the word to a run of the lunar stations as well — Saʿd al-Dhābiḥ, Saʿd Bulaʿ, Saʿd al-Suʿūd — stars whose rising marked the turn of a season.

One root, four names

Saʿd, Saʿīd, Suʿūd and Masʿūd are four patterns on one root and are not interchangeable: *Saʿd* is the fortune itself, *Saʿīd* the one who has it, *Masʿūd* the one made fortunate by it, *Suʿūd* a plural of *saʿd*. A record that treats them as spellings of one name loses a distinction the sources keep.

As an eponym

The genealogists report more than one Saʿd as an ancestor a group is named for — Saʿd ibn Bakr under Hawāzin, a Saʿd in Banū Tamīm, Saʿd al-ʿAshīra under Madhḥij — as they report it, and they differ among themselves. The groups called Banī Saʿd are treated separately in the sources, so neither the name nor the nisba *al-Saʿdī* attributes a bearer to any one of them.