Al-Ghawwas

The word

Al-Ghawwas (al-ghawwāṣ) is the intensive faʿʿāl of gh-w-ṣ. Lisān al-ʿArab gives ghāṣa fī al-māʾ as going down into the water and under it, and al-ghawṣ as the diving itself; the ghawwāṣ is the man who dives in the sea for pearls, and the place where the diving is done is the maghāṣ. In ordinary Arabic the word also crossed over to the mind — one ghāṣa ʿalā al-maʿnā when he went down after a hidden meaning and brought it up — but the family name sits on the first sense: the diver in the sea, not the metaphor.

A diver, not a dealer

On a pearling coast the diver was one man among several, and the family names of the coast keep them apart. The ghawwāṣ went down for the shell; al-ṭawwāsh, in the usage of the Gulf, was the man who bought the pearls; al-nōkhadha commanded the boat. The three names can stand side by side in one town and say three different things about the ancestor each records. This reference places the name among the family names of the coast from al-Khaṭṭ to Tārūt and Dārīn.

Bearing the name

An occupational family name records what an ancestor did, as the name was applied to him — not a lineage. It attaches to no tribe, and two families bearing it need have no connection to one another beyond the word itself.