Arab family names

Origins, tribes, and history of Arab family names.

• Al-Dili

  A family name (nisba) to Banu al-Dil of Abd al-Qays. More than one group of nearly this name is kept apart in the sources, and the vowelling of the word is itse

• Al-Dimashqi

  A family name (nisba) to Damascus, which Yaqut gives as the seat of al-Sham. It names a city where al-Shami names the whole country around it, so one origin can

• Al-Diri

  A family name (nisba) to a place called al-Dīra or al-Dayr. Names of that kind are found across the whole Arabic-speaking world, so the nisba points to no one p

• Al-Dosari

  A family-name (nisba) form indicating attribution to the Al-Dawasir confederation.

• Al-Fadil

  A byname from f-ḍ-l, a root that begins at what is left over and ends at merit: faḍla is the remainder of a thing, faḍl is the opposite of deficiency and then g

• Al-Fallah

  An occupational family name from f-l-ḥ: the lexicon's falḥ is splitting the earth for tilling, and the fallāḥ is the cultivator. The same root gives al-falāḥ, s

• Al-Faqih

  A name from f-q-h, whose lexical sense is understanding; the faqīh is one versed in the law, and in several regions the word is also used of the man who teaches

• Al-Farran

  An occupational family name from furn, the bread oven — a word Ibn Manẓūr marks as arabicised and keeps apart from the tannūr; it names the oven where al-Khabba

• Al-Fazari

  A family name (nisba) to Fazāra of Dhubyān of Ghaṭafān — the narrowest of three nisbas that may name one line, and frequent in the early literature where descen

• Al-Ghamdi

  A family-name (nisba) form indicating attribution to the Ghamid tribe.

• Al-Ghanawi

  A family name (nisba) to Ghanī of Qays ʿAylān; the classical nisba to Ghanī is al-Ghanawī, with the yāʾ turned to wāw, which is what separates it from forms bui

• Al-Ghassani

  A family name (nisba) to Ghassān — a name the genealogists say is a water's and not an ancestor's, so the form reports a group that took a water's name rather t

• Al-Ghatafani

  A family name (nisba) to Ghaṭafān of Qays ʿAylān — a nisba to a gathering name, less used than the branch nisbas beneath it.

• Al-Ghawwas

  An occupational family name from gh-w-ṣ, going down under water; in Lisān al-ʿArab the ghawwāṣ is the one who dives in the sea for pearls — the word at the cent

• Al-Ghifari

  A family name (nisba) to Ghifār of Kināna; in unpointed writing it is confused with al-Ghaffārī, from the given name ʿAbd al-Ghaffār, and with al-Ghāfirī, from

• Al-Haddad

  An occupational family name from ḥ-d-d, the working of iron; the lexicon also gives ḥaddād for the doorkeeper and the gaoler, so the word does not point only at

• Al-Hadhrami

  A family name (nisba) to the Hadhramaut region of Yemen — one of the most widely travelled nisbas in the Islamic world.

• Al-Haik

  An occupational family name from ḥ-w-k: the ḥāʾik is the man at the loom. The classical books of adab record a low regard for the trade, an attitude of that lit

• Al-Hajari

  A family name (nisba) to Hajar, the town Yāqūt records in eastern Arabia and the name the geographers also give to the seat of the whole country of al-Baḥrayn.

• Al-Hajiri (with ha)

  A family name (nisba) to Ḥājir, the halting place Yāqūt records on the pilgrim road toward Mecca. It is the third of a set: al-Hājirī of Banī Hājir and al-Hajar

• Al-Hajj

  A family name from the byname al-ḥājj, said of a man who had made the pilgrimage; the root ḥ-j-j means to set out for a thing with purpose. The pilgrimage is an

• Al-Hajji

  The Gulf form ḥajjī, beside al-ḥājj: a family name from the byname of a man who had made the pilgrimage. The two are two forms of one sense — an act performed,

• Al-Hajri

  A family name (nisba) attributed in eastern Arabia and Qatar to the tribe of Banī Hājir; al-Ḥājirī with ḥāʾ, and al-Hajarī from the town of Hajar, are different

• Al-Halabi

  A family name (nisba) to Aleppo in northern al-Sham. The town's name is the ordinary word for milking, and the story the geographers relay about it they relay a

• Al-Hamdani

  A family name (nisba) to the Yemeni confederation of Hamdan; borne by the great geographer al-Hasan al-Hamdani.

• Al-Hammami

  A family name met in the al-Qaṭīf district, taken from Umm al-Ḥamām — the nisba to a compound name of that shape being built on its second element. The same wri

• Al-Hanafi

  A family name answering to two entirely unrelated origins: the nisba to Banū Ḥanīfa of al-Yamāma, and the epithet of a follower of the Ḥanafī school of law. Not

• Al-Hanzali

  A family name (nisba) attributed to Banū Ḥanẓala of Tamīm — a parent name under which the genealogists place Dārim, Yarbūʿ and others, so it fixes no single bra

• Al-Harbi

  A family-name (nisba) form indicating attribution to the Harb tribe.

• Al-Harithi

  A family name (nisba) built on the name al-Ḥārith, which is repeated so widely across the branches that the form arises independently in groups unrelated to one

• Al-Harsusi

  A family name (nisba) to al-Harasis of central Oman, whose desert — the Jiddat al-Harasis — carries the same name.

• Al-Hashimi

  A family name (nisba) attributed to Banū Hāshim, a clan of Quraysh at Mecca; as a form it settles nothing about a bearer's line, and any claim of sharifian or ʿ

• Al-Hassar

  An occupational family name from al-ḥaṣīr, the woven mat: the ḥaṣṣār made or sold mats. The root ḥ-ṣ-r also means hemming in and confinement — the siege, al-ḥiṣ

• Al-Hawazini

  A family name (nisba) to Hawazin — a nisba to a gathering name rather than to a single tribe.

• Al-Hijazi

  A family name (nisba) to the Hijaz, the barrier country of western Arabia. It names a whole region rather than a town, and the geographers draw that region's bo

• Al-Hilali

  A family name (nisba) borne from the Maghreb to the Gulf — in its tribal sense to Banū Hilāl, though Hilāl is also an ordinary personal name a nisba can be buil

• Al-Himyari

  A family name (nisba) to Ḥimyar — a whole Qaḥṭānī grouping rather than a single tribe, which makes it one of the widest attributions in Yemen.

• Al-Hudhali

  A family name (nisba) to Hudhayl, the Hijazi tribe of the mountains between Mecca and Ṭāʾif, known above all for its poets.

• Al-Hufufi

  A family name (nisba) to al-Hufuf, the town of al-Ahsa in eastern Arabia. It names the town where al-Ahsai names the country around it, and the same origin can

• Al-Hulw

  A byname from ḥ-l-w. The lexicon moves the word off the tongue quickly: a man is called ḥulw for how he deals with people and how he speaks, not for anything ta

• Al-Ijli

  A family name (nisba) to ʿIjl of Bakr ibn Wāʾil; ʿijl is also the ordinary word for a calf and a personal name, and al-ʿAjalī and al-ʿAjlānī are different names

• Al-Imam

  A name from ʾ-m-m, to head for a thing; in the lexicon an imām is anything a people follow — a road, a builder's guide-line, a book, a man. It records that an a

• Al-Jabburi

  A family name (nisba) to al-Jubur. In eastern Arabia al-Jubur is a section of Bani Khalid, but a wholly unrelated tribe of the same name is recorded in Iraq, an

• Al-Jadhimi

  A nisba to Jadhīma. One Jadhīma is a section of ʿAbd al-Qays on the eastern coast, but the genealogists carry the name for other unrelated groups as well, so th

• Al-Jammal

  An occupational family name from j-m-l, the camel: the jammāl keeps, drives and hires out camels. Doubling the mīm is the whole difference from jamāl, beauty, a

• Al-Jarudi

  A family name (nisba) to al-Jārūdiyya, a village of the al-Qaṭīf district. The same written form is used in the older literature for a doctrinal designation, an

• Al-Jawathi

  A family name (nisba) to Juwāthā, the fortified place of the ʿAbd al-Qays country in al-Baḥrayn that the early sources name. The place is documented; the name a

• Al-Jazzar

  An occupational family name from j-z-r, the slaughtering of the beast; the lexicon distinguishes it from qaṣṣāb, which names the cutting up, though regional usa

• Al-Jishi

  A family name (nisba) to al-Jish in the district of al-Qatif. The word is ordinary Arabic — coarse grinding, and rising ground — and more than one place in the

• Al-Judhami

  A family name (nisba) to Judhām of the Kahlān line in the north of the Ḥijāz — a name that shares a root with an unrelated word and a brother-tribe with a nearl