Al-Hulw

The word

Lisān al-ʿArab gives al-ḥalāwa as the opposite of bitterness, then carries the word straight over to people: a man is ḥulw when he is agreeable in company, ḥulw al-shamāʾil, sweet in his ways, and ḥulw al-lisān of pleasant speech, the phrases the lexicon actually cites. It keeps ḥalāwa apart from ḥulwān, which is not a taste at all but a thing handed over — a fee or a payment given for something done. Al-ḥalwāʾ, the confection, is the made sweet, and it is the word from which the confectioner's trade-name is formed.

A byname of manner

So the byname belongs to the second sense. It was said of a man for how he bore himself with others, and it worked like any byname: it distinguished him, outlasted him, and was written after his son until it was simply the name of a household. It should be said plainly that a family name of this kind is not a verdict on anyone — the pleasantness, if it was ever real, was one man's, generations ago.

Not al-Ḥalwānī

The two are near neighbours in writing and are separate names. Al-Ḥalwānī is formed from ḥalwāʾ and belongs with the occupational names: the confectioner who makes and sells sweets, a trade of the market rather than a quality of a man. Yāqūt also records Ḥulwān as a town on the Iraq road at the edge of the Jibāl, so that the same written form can be a toponymic — a nisba to the place. Al-Ḥulw is none of these; a family bearing it has no relation to a family bearing al-Ḥalwānī on the strength of the resemblance.

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.