Al-Hajji

The word

Al-Hajji (al-ḥajjī) is the colloquial form the Gulf uses beside al-ḥājj, and it means the same thing: one who has made the pilgrimage, and by extension a courteous way of addressing an older man. The root is ḥ-j-j, whose plain sense in Lisān al-ʿArab is setting out for a thing with purpose, before it is the pilgrimage to the House; the fuller account of the word is on the page for al-Hajj. The classical lexicon gives al-ḥājj, with the plurals ḥujjāj and ḥajīj. The form ḥajjī, also found in Persian and Turkish usage, is later and is not recorded there, but it adds no sense to the word.

Two forms, one sense

Al-Ḥajjī and al-Ḥājj are not two titles of different weight, and neither is a rank above the other. They are two ways of saying one thing: that an ancestor had performed the pilgrimage, or was addressed as though he had. Whatever the final -ī is taken to be, it does not point to a town or a people, as the -ī of al-Qaṭīfī does. Nor is ḥajjī to be confused with al-ḥujja, the proof or argument, a different word on the same root.

Bearing the name

A family name of this kind records a title or a form of address that was applied to an ancestor and then stayed with his descendants. It is not a lineage in itself, and it confers nothing: no one bearing it today holds an office, a rank, a religious standing or a descent by virtue of the name. It attaches to no tribe, and two families bearing it need have no connection to one another beyond the word itself.