Arab family names

Origins, tribes, and history of Arab family names.

• Al-Abdi

  The classical nisba of Abd al-Qays, the tribe the genealogists place on the eastern coast. But the same form arises from any ancestor called Abd-something, and

• Al-Abqasi

  The contracted nisba to ʿAbd al-Qays, formed by carving one word out of two: ʿAbd al-Qays gives ʿAbqasī. The grammarians treat it with ʿAbshamī and ʿAbdarī as a

• Al-Absi

  A family name (nisba) to ʿAbs of Ghaṭafān — the tribe of the pre-Islamic poet ʿAntara ibn Shaddād.

• Al-Abyad

  A byname from b-y-ḍ, whiteness. Most of what the lexicon builds on the root is figurative: the heart of a settlement, the sword, land bare of plants, and a man

• Al-Adawi

  A family name (nisba) to an ancestor named ʿAdī — of Quraysh, of al-Ribāb with Tamīm, of Khuzāʿa or of Ṭayyiʾ; one written form covers all of them.

• Al-Adwani

  A family name (nisba) to ʿAdwān of Qays ʿAylān; in writing it must be kept apart from al-ʿAdawī, the nisba to ʿAdī, and from al-ʿAdwānī built on other ʿAdwāns o

• Al-Ahmar

  A byname from ḥ-m-r, redness. The classical entry is wider than the modern sense of the word: the lexicon gives it of the height of summer heat, of a year of dr

• Al-Ahsai

  A family name (nisba) to al-Ahsa, the great oasis country of eastern Arabia. It names the region; al-Hufufi names its town, so one origin can be written either

• Al-Ajmi

  A family name (nisba) attributed to the tribe of Ajman.

• Al-Amili

  A family name (nisba) to ʿĀmila of the southern Levant — and equally a toponymic, to the mountain district that carries the tribe's name, and an ordinary format

• Al-Amin

  A name from ʾ-m-n: the trustworthy man and, in the same form, the one entrusted with something. It is also an ordinary given name, so a family called al-Amīn ma

• Al-Amiri

  A family name (nisba) attributed in its tribal sense to ʿĀmir ibn Ṣaʿṣaʿa of Hawāzin — but ʿĀmir is a very common personal name, and many unrelated lines yield

• Al-Anbari

  A family name (nisba) to Banū al-ʿAnbar of Tamīm, met in the old books under the contracted form Balʿanbar; ʿanbar is also the ordinary word for ambergris and a

• Al-Anki

  A family name (nisba) to ʿAnak, a village of the al-Qaṭīf coast. The classical works this reference cites do not record the place, and the short name is easily

• Al-Ansari

  A family name (nisba) attributed to the Ansar of Medina — the tribes of Aws and Khazraj.

• Al-Anzi

  A family-name (nisba) form indicating attribution to the Anizah tribe.

• Al-Arhabi

  A family name (nisba) to Arḥab of Bakīl of Hamdān north-east of Sanaa — a name borne by a country and by a famous breed of riding camel as well as by a people.

• Al-Asadi

  A family name (nisba) carried on more than one Asad: Asad ibn Khuzayma of Muḍar, Asad ibn ʿAbd al-ʿUzzā of Quraysh, further Banū Asad groups elsewhere, and the

• Al-Asari

  The nisba of ʿAṣar, a section recorded among the branches of ʿAbd al-Qays on the eastern coast. The name is vowelled ʿAṣar and is also an ordinary word, and the

• Al-Ashjai

  A family name (nisba) to Ashjaʿ of Ghaṭafān, and separately to the ordinary name Ashjaʿ — the elative of shujāʿ — and to other Ashjaʿ groups.

• Al-Ashqar

  A byname from sh-q-r, a colour the lexicon fixes between white and red: said of hair, a redness showing in it; said of horses, a distinct coat the old poets nam

• Al-Aswad

  A byname from s-w-d. In the lexicon the root carries far more than the colour: a shape seen at a distance, the mass of a town's people, the cultivated countrysi

• Al-Ataki

  A family name (nisba) to al-ʿAtīk of Azd, strongly associated with ʿUmān and with Baṣra in the early period, and met heavily through clientage.

• Al-Attar

  An occupational family name from ʿ-ṭ-r, perfume in the lexicon. The ʿaṭṭār of the classical market dealt in aromatics, simples and compounded drugs together, cl

• Al-Awami

  A family name (nisba) to al-Awamiyya in the district of al-Qatif. The word behind it belongs to the root of swimming and of the year, both ordinary, so the form

• Al-Awjami

  A family name (nisba) to al-Awjām on the al-Qaṭīf coast. The classical works this reference cites do not document the place; the name sits on a root that gives

• Al-Azdi

  A family name (nisba) to al-Azd — one of the broadest tribal nisbas, recorded from Oman to the Sarāt highlands.

• Al-Azimi

  A family name (nisba) to al-ʿAwāzim of Kuwait and the northern Gulf coast; the sources differ on their wider affiliation.

• Al-Baghdadi

  A family name (nisba) to Baghdad in Iraq. The geographers give the town's name in several spellings and treat it as non-Arabic, and the nisba is borne very wide

• Al-Bahari (of the Qatif village)

  A family name (nisba) to al-Baḥārī, a village of the al-Qaṭīf oasis. Three names of this coast stand on the root b-ḥ-r and are not the same: this one, al-Baḥrān

• Al-Bahili

  A family name (nisba) to Bāhila of Qays ʿAylān — a tribe the classical literature treats with a hostility that is a literary set-piece, not a report about peopl

• Al-Bahrani

  A family name (nisba) to Bahrāʾ of Quḍāʿah on the Syrian marches — written a single letter away from al-Baḥrānī, the nisba to al-Baḥrayn, which is a different w

• Al-Bahrani (of al-Bahrayn)

  A family name (nisba) to al-Baḥrayn, the whole eastern seaboard in the classical sources. The form is irregular — Lisān al-ʿArab says the nisba is Baḥrānī and n

• Al-Bahri

  The nisba to al-baḥr, the sea. Lisān al-ʿArab names it as the reason al-Baḥrayn yields the irregular Baḥrānī rather than Baḥraynī: the Arabs kept the two apart.

• Al-Bakili

  A family name (nisba) to Bakil, one of the two Hamdani confederations of the Yemeni highlands, paired with Hashid.

• Al-Balawi

  A family name (nisba) attributed to the ancient tribe of Bali.

• Al-Balqarni

  A family name (nisba) to Balqarn of the southern Sarāt, built on a name commonly read as a contraction of Banū al-Qarn.

• Al-Banna

  An occupational family name from b-n-y, the raising of a structure; Ibn Khaldūn treats building as the first of the crafts of settled life, with the clay-worker

• Al-Baqqal

  An occupational family name from b-q-l: baql is the green herbage the earth puts out, and the baqqāl sells it. The lexicon notes that the seller of dry provisio

• Al-Basri

  A family name (nisba) to al-Basra in Iraq, one of the two garrison cities of the early conquests. The same written form serves the nisba to Busra in the Levant,

• Al-Baynuni

  A family name (nisba) to Baynūna, the district the geographers place along the eastern coast between the country of al-Baḥrayn and ʿOmān. The word is an ordinar

• Al-Dabbagh

  An occupational family name from d-b-gh, tanning: the dabbāgh cures hide into leather. It is one letter away in writing from al-Ṣabbāgh, the dyer, and the two t

• Al-Damri

  A family name (nisba) to Ḍamra of Kināna, and separately to the widespread personal name Ḍamra; Ghifār stands beneath Ḍamra in the ordering, so one line may be

• Al-Darai

  A family name (nisba) to al-Duruʿ of the Omani interior; the same written form is also a territorial nisba, so it is not confined to that tribe.

• Al-Dari

  A name the classical sources use in more than one sense: the perfume-seller, whose trade-name the lexicographers derive from the musk landed at Dārīn; the nisba

• Al-Darimi

  A family name (nisba) attributed to Dārim of Banū Tamīm, a name of Najd and not of Quraysh; al-Dārī, from Banū al-Dār of Lakhm, is a different nisba the script

• Al-Darini

  A family name (nisba) to Darin, the port on Tarut where the classical books say the musk was landed. It is to be kept apart from al-Dari, which the same sources

• Al-Dawsi

  A family name (nisba) to Daws of al-Azd in the high Sarāt — kept apart in the classical books from al-Dawsarī, which belongs to a wholly separate name.

• Al-Dhubyani

  A family name (nisba) to Dhubyān of Ghaṭafān — a middle tier between al-Ghaṭafānī above it and al-Fazārī below, and a different word from al-Ẓabyānī with ẓāʾ.

• Al-Dhuhli

  A family name (nisba) to Dhuhl within Bakr ibn Wāʾil — a name the Bakr genealogy carries twice, an elder Dhuhl and a younger, which the genealogists take care t