Arab family names

Origins, tribes, and history of Arab family names.

• Al-Juhani

  A family name (nisba) attributed to the ancient Hijazi tribe of Juhaynah.

• Al-Jumahi

  A family name (nisba) to Banū Jumaḥ of Quraysh, a clan the sources rarely mention apart from Banū Sahm; the name is reported as a byname, not a given name.

• Al-Kaabi

  A family name (nisba) to Banī Kaʿb — a name the sources record for more than one group, and which they do not merge.

• Al-Kabir

  A byname from k-b-r, a root that covers age, precedence and standing more than size. In a name it is most often the other half of a pair: al-kabīr and al-ṣaghīr

• Al-Kalbi

  A family name (nisba) to Kalb ibn Wabara of Quḍāʿah — one vowel from al-Kilābī, which belongs to another tribe entirely, and a nisba met constantly in the chain

• Al-Katib

  An occupational name from k-t-b, a root whose first sense in the lexicon is joining and sewing together, not writing; the kātib is the scribe and, in settled go

• Al-Khabaqi

  A family name (nisba) to al-Khabāqa, a locality of the Qaṭīf oasis. Neither the place nor the derivation of its name is documented in the classical works this r

• Al-Khabbaz

  An occupational family name from kh-b-z, the making of bread; it names the bread where al-Farran names the oven, and the two are often one trade under two words

• Al-Khalidi

  A family name (nisba) borne by families attributed to Bani Khalid, and by others across the Arab world.

• Al-Khathami

  The classical nisba of Khathʿam, the southern grouping of the Sarāt whose own branch attribution the genealogists never settled.

• Al-Khatib

  An office-name from kh-ṭ-b, speaking to an assembly; the khaṭīb is the one who delivers the address. The name records that an ancestor was so called, and passes

• Al-Khatti

  A family name (nisba) to al-Khatt, the classical name of the eastern coast of Arabia. The same adjective names the Khatti spears of the poets, which the lexicog

• Al-Khawlani

  A family name (nisba) to Khawlān — a Yemeni name borne by more than one people the sources themselves keep apart, and whose own filing the genealogists never ag

• Al-Khawwas

  An occupational family name from khūṣ, the leaf of the date palm: the khawwāṣ is the man who plaits palm-leaf into mats and baskets or sells it. Not to be confu

• Al-Khayyat

  An occupational family name from kh-y-ṭ, the thread: the khayyāṭ is the man who sews cloth into a garment, a trade the lexicon keeps distinct from weaving the c

• Al-Khuwaylidi

  A family name met on the al-Qaṭīf coast. Khuwaylid is the diminutive of Khālid, an old and common personal name, so the nisba is formed on an ancestor's name as

• Al-Khuzai

  A family name (nisba) to Khuzāʿah, the tribe the histories record as holding Mecca before Quraysh — and whose own place in the genealogies the sources never set

• Al-Kilabi

  A family name (nisba) to Kilāb of ʿĀmir ibn Ṣaʿṣaʿa — a different name from al-Kalbī, the nisba of Kalb ibn Wabara of Quḍāʿa, with which modern writing routinel

• Al-Kinani

  A family name (nisba) to Kināna of the Hijaz — a parent name broad enough that Quraysh itself is reckoned within it.

• Al-Kindi

  A family name (nisba) to the ancient tribe of Kinda; famously borne by the philosopher Yaqub ibn Ishaq al-Kindi.

• Al-Kufi

  A family name (nisba) to al-Kufa in Iraq, the second of the two garrison cities. Kufa is a common noun for round red sand before it is a town, and the word also

• Al-Kuwaykibi

  A family name (nisba) to al-Kuwaykib, a locality of the Qaṭīf oasis. The base is the diminutive of kawkab, a star, and the nisba keeps the diminutive as it stan

• Al-Lakhmi

  A family name (nisba) to Lakhm of the Kahlān line, one of the two great tribes of the southern Levant frontier — routinely interchanged in later writing with al

• Al-Lami

  A family name (nisba) to Bani Lam, a tribe the genealogists reckon to Tayyi — met in Iraq as much as in northern Arabia.

• Al-Laythi

  A family name (nisba) to Layth of Kināna, and separately to the ordinary personal name Layth, to other Layth groups, and to a place of the name on the Tihāma co

• Al-Lujaymi

  The nisba to Lujaym, a section the genealogists place under Bakr ibn Wāʾil. The name is a diminutive in form, and is to be kept apart from names built directly

• Al-Lukayzi

  A family name (nisba) to Lukayz, the section of Abd al-Qays the genealogists carry on the eastern coast. It is narrower than al-Abdi and therefore says more.

• Al-Maafiri

  A family name (nisba) to Maʿāfir, reckoned to Ḥimyar rather than to Kinda, and equally the name of a Yemeni district and of a well-known cloth.

• Al-Madani

  A family name (nisba) to al-Madina in the Hijaz. Al-Madini is a separate form the biographical literature uses for men attributed to other towns called madina,

• Al-Maghribi

  A family name (nisba) to the Maghrib, the land of the sunset west of Egypt. Ibn Khaldun divides that country into a near, a middle and a farthest Maghrib, so th

• Al-Mahri

  A family name (nisba) to al-Mahrah of the far south; the tribe's tongue, Mehri, is a separate Modern South Arabian language, not an Arabic dialect.

• Al-Makhzumi

  A family name (nisba) to Banū Makhzūm, a clan of Quraysh at Mecca; the name is rare outside the clan, which makes the nisba narrow in what it points to and no n

• Al-Makki

  A family name (nisba) to Mecca in the Hijaz. In the classical literature the name is carried by residence and by study as readily as by birth, so it records whe

• Al-Maliki

  A family name borne by groups with nothing in common: several distinct tribes named Banī Mālik, and — a different thing entirely — the Mālikī school of law.

• Al-Mallahi

  A family name met on the al-Qaṭīf coast. It reads two ways with equal ease: as a nisba to a place called al-Mallāḥa, and as the old occupational word mallāḥ — i

• Al-Mansouri

  A family name (nisba) attributed in the UAE to al-Manāṣīr; it also forms independently from the very common name Manṣūr, so many unrelated families bear it.

• Al-Marri

  A family name (nisba) attributed in the Gulf to the tribe of Al Murrah; a like-sounding classical nisba to Banu Murrah also exists.

• Al-Masri

  A family name (nisba) to Misr. The word is both the name of the land and a common noun for a great settled city, which is where the plural amsar comes from, and

• Al-Mazrouei

  A family name (nisba) attributed in the UAE to the Mazari' of the Bani Yas confederation; a distinct Mazrui history exists in Oman and East Africa.

• Al-Minqari

  A family name (nisba) to Banū Minqar of Tamīm — a section on the limb of Saʿd ibn Zayd Manāt, not on that of Ḥanẓala, which later writing frequently confuses.

• Al-Muallim

  An occupational name from ʿ-l-m, to know and to mark; the muʿallim is the teacher, and in the trades of several regions he is the master of a craft rather than

• Al-Mudliji

  A family name (nisba) to Mudlij, a section of Kināna, and separately to the ordinary personal name Mudlij; the reputation the sources attach to the tribe is not

• Al-Muharibi

  A family name (nisba) carried on more than one Muḥārib: Muḥārib ibn Khaṣafa of Qays, Muḥārib ibn Fihr of Quraysh, and further Muḥārib groups the sources keep ap

• Al-Muhayshi

  A family name (nisba) to Ḥillat Muḥaysh, a locality of the Qaṭīf oasis. The derivation of Muḥaysh is not settled in the sources this reference cites.

• Al-Mujashii

  A family name (nisba) to Banū Mujāshiʿ, a section of Dārim of Tamīm known through the poets of Baṣra; later writing attaches it more loosely than the classical

• Al-Mulla

  A family name from the title al-mullā, a form of address for a lettered man; the usual account connects the form with Arabic mawlā through Persian and Turkish u

• Al-Muradi

  A family name (nisba) to Murād of Madhḥij — and equally a nisba to the ordinary word murād or to a forebear of that name, which is not the same thing.

• Al-Mushaqqari

  A family name (nisba) to al-Mushaqqar, the ancient fortress of Hajar in the country of al-Baḥrayn that the geographers enter and the old poets name.

• Al-Mutairi

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

• Al-Mutawwa

  A family name from al-muṭawwaʿ, in Gulf usage a title for a teacher of the Qurʾān and prayer; the root ṭ-w-ʿ gives in Lisān al-ʿArab al-taṭawwuʿ, what is done o