Al-Abyad

The word

Lisān al-ʿArab gives bayāḍ as the opposite of blackness and then turns almost at once to the figures built on it. Bayḍat al-dār is the middle of a settlement and bayḍat al-qawm their body and their protected heart, the thing an attack is aimed at. Al-abyaḍ is used of the sword, for its polish. Al-bayḍāʾ is said of smooth land that carries no plants. And ibyaḍḍa wajhuhu — his face whitened — is said of a man who comes out of a matter with his repute intact, set directly against the phrase for its opposite. The white nights of the lunar month, al-ayyām al-bīḍ, are from the same root, named for the moon that fills them.

A byname, then a name

Said of a man, abyaḍ was one of the words that told him from another of his name, and it became a family name as those words do: it stayed after him, was written after his son, and stopped describing anyone at all. The word is plain and common, and families carrying it in different regions are ordinarily unrelated.

Bearing the name

A family name of this kind records a byname that was applied to one ancestor and then stayed with his descendants. It reports how he was called, not a lineage, and it says nothing about the body, the character or the standing of anyone who bears it now. It attaches to no tribe, and two families bearing it need have no connection to one another beyond the word itself.