Al-Khuwaylidi

Overview

Al-Khuwaylidi (al-Khuwaylidī) is met in the al-Qaṭīf district. Khuwaylid is the diminutive of Khālid, formed on the pattern Arabic uses for affectionate or reduced forms of a name, and Khālid itself is from the root kh-l-d, which Lisān al-ʿArab gives as remaining, lasting and enduring. Diminutives of this kind were used as personal names in their own right and are old in the language.

Two routes to the same name

A nisba of this shape reaches the page by either of two roads. It may be built directly on a forebear called Khuwaylid, which is the commonest way such names arise anywhere in Arabic and carries no geographical sense at all. Or it may be built on a settlement named after a man of that name — place-names of this coast and of the country behind it are often formed that way — in which case it is toponymic and says where rather than whose. The written form is the same on both roads and does not distinguish them.

On sources

The classical works this reference is permitted to cite do not document a settlement of this name in the al-Qaṭīf district, and do not carry the family name. What is documented here is only the word: the diminutive, its root, and the ordinary use of such diminutives as names. No history is constructed beyond that.

Bearing the name

A toponymic family name records a place an ancestor was attributed to — born there, settled there, known by it — 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.