Al-Tahhan
An occupational family name from ṭ-ḥ-n, the grinding of grain at the mill; it names the grinding, where al-Daqqaq names the flour that comes of it.
- Type
- Occupational name
- Sense
- One who grinds grain at the mill; a miller
- Root
- ṭ-ḥ-n
The word
Al-Tahhan (al-ṭaḥḥān) is built on ṭ-ḥ-n. In Lisān al-ʿArab ṭaḥn is the grinding of grain between the two stones of the raḥā; the act is ṭaḥn and what comes of it is ṭiḥn, the flour, the two distinguished by the vowel alone. The ṭaḥḥān is the man of the mill and his craft the ṭiḥāna, and the lexicon lends the root to the body as well: the ṭawāḥin are the molar teeth, for what they do. The mill was among the fixed works of a settled place, turned by hand, by beast or by water, and the name says nothing of which.
Names near it
Al-Daqqāq is the near neighbour: daqq is pounding fine, and the name attaches to the flour and its selling rather than to the stone, so the two were used in one town for two ends of one business. Different in kind is al-Ṭaḥāwī, which looks close but is a toponymic — the nisba to a place called Ṭaḥā that the geographers put in the Egyptian Ṣaʿīd, not an occupational name at all. One word points at a craft, the other at a village.
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.
Sources
- ابن منظور، لسان العرب، 711هـ — مادة: طحن، ومادة: دقق
- ياقوت، معجم البلدان، 626هـ — مادة: طحا
This page is an educational, historical reference compiled from published sources. It is not an authority on lineage. Where sources differ, we report the difference without taking a position. Corrections are welcome via our contact page.
Last reviewed: 2026-09-07