Arab family names

Origins, tribes, and history of Arab family names.

• Al-Muzani

  A family name (nisba) to Muzayna, a name the genealogists report as a mother's name applied to her sons of ʿAmr ibn Udd; the nisba is formed al-Muzanī, not al-M

• Al-Nahdi

  A family name (nisba) to Nahd of Quḍāʿah — and a form that can equally be built on the ordinary root n-h-d, from which the personal name comes, with no tribal s

• Al-Najdi

  A family name (nisba) to Najd, the high interior of Arabia. Najd is a common noun for high ground before it is a proper name, and the geographers define the reg

• Al-Najjar

  An occupational family name from n-j-r, the hewing and shaping of wood; written exactly like the name of Banū al-Najjār of the Khazraj, which is a tribal name a

• Al-Nakhai

  A family name (nisba) to al-Nakhaʿ of Madhḥij, a form met far more often through al-Kūfa and through clientage than in Yemen.

• Al-Naqqash

  An occupational family name from n-q-sh; in the sources the naqqāsh engraves seals and stone, inscribes, and paints ornament — a wider trade than the modern wor

• Al-Nasiri

  A family name built on the root n-ṣ-r. It is formed on the ordinary personal name Nāṣir, on al-Nāṣira, on al-Nāṣiriyya and on other places of the root, and on i

• Al-Nassaj

  An occupational family name from n-s-j, the wider of the two Arabic words for weaving: nasj is the interlacing of anything, and the nassāj is the man who does i

• Al-Nawfali

  A family name (nisba) attributed to Banū Nawfal b. ʿAbd Manāf of Quraysh; Nawfal is a repeated personal name, and the written nisba does not say which Nawfal is

• Al-Nokhadha

  A Gulf family name from al-nōkhadha, the master of a ship; the word is a loan into Gulf Arabic, generally held to be Persian nākhudā, and the classical lexicon

• Al-Nukri

  A family name (nisba) to al-Nukra, a division within Lukayz of Abd al-Qays on the eastern coast. The root behind the name is ordinary Arabic, so the written for

• Al-Numayri

  A family name (nisba) to Numayr of ʿĀmir ibn Ṣaʿṣaʿa — to be kept apart from al-Namirī, the nisba of al-Namir ibn Qāsiṭ of Rabīʿa.

• Al-Otaibi

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

• Al-Qadi

  An office-name from q-ḍ-y, to decide and to bring to completion; the qāḍī is the one who settles a dispute. The name records that an ancestor held or was called

• Al-Qahtani

  A family-name (nisba) form indicating attribution to Qahtan.

• Al-Qalai

  A family name that may sit on any of three things in the root q-l-ʿ: a place called al-Qalʿa, the sense of uprooting, or the qalaʿī of good lead and of swords w

• Al-Qallaf

  An occupational family name from q-l-f: in Lisān al-ʿArab qalf of a ship is sewing its planks with palm fibre and working pitch into the seams, and the qallāf i

• Al-Qassab

  An occupational family name from q-ṣ-b, the jointing of a carcass; the same word is given in the lexicon for the reed-piper, and it is exchanged with al-Jazzar

• Al-Qassimi

  A family name (nisba) to al-Qasim in Najd. In the lexicon qasim describes a kind of country — sandy ground grown with ghada — before it is the name of a provinc

• Al-Qatifi

  A family name (nisba) to al-Qatif, the palm oasis on the Gulf coast of eastern Arabia. In the geographers the name covers both the town and the coastal district

• Al-Qattan

  An occupational family name from al-quṭn, cotton: the qaṭṭān dealt in cotton. Written without vowels it can also be read quṭṭān, a plural of qāṭin, those who dw

• Al-Qaysi

  A family name (nisba) to Qays ʿAylān — a gathering name rather than a single tribe — and also a nisba to the ordinary personal name Qays.

• Al-Qudayhi

  A family name (nisba) to al-Qudaih in the district of al-Qatif. The place-name is a diminutive on the root of the qadah, the drinking bowl, and of striking fire

• Al-Qudsi

  A family name (nisba) to the town Yaqut enters under more than one name — Bayt al-Maqdis, Iliya, al-Quds. The older and commoner nisba in the classical books is

• Al-Qurashi

  A family name (nisba) to Quraysh, the historical tribe of Mecca — recorded in the classical works for descent and for clientage alike.

• Al-Qushayri

  A family name (nisba) to Qushayr ibn Kaʿb of ʿĀmir ibn Ṣaʿṣaʿa — frequent in the early scholarly literature, where descent and clientage are not always distingu

• Al-Rabii

  Most often the nisba to Rabīʿa, the great ʿAdnānī grouping the genealogists set beside Muḍar. It is also the nisba to al-Rabīʿiyya, a village of the al-Qaṭīf oa

• Al-Rashidi

  A family name (nisba) borne by unrelated families — some attributed to Bani Rashid, some to al-Rashayidah, and many taking the name from the given name Rashid a

• Al-Saadi

  A family name (nisba) to one of several distinct groups named Saʿd — a nisba that has to be disambiguated before it says anything.

• Al-Sabbagh

  An occupational family name from ṣ-b-gh, dyeing: the ṣabbāgh colours cloth. It is one letter away in writing from al-Dabbāgh, the tanner, and the two trades hav

• Al-Saffar

  An occupational family name from al-ṣufr, brass or copper: the ṣaffār is the coppersmith who works it into vessels. The same letters give ṣifr, empty, and ṣufra

• Al-Safwani

  A family name (nisba) to Safwa on the eastern coast. The word behind it, safwan, is the ordinary Arabic for smooth bare rock, and it is also a common personal n

• Al-Saghir

  A byname from ṣ-gh-r. In a name it rarely describes size: al-ṣaghīr and al-kabīr are the pair by which a household told apart two men who carried the same given

• Al-Sahiki

  A family name (nisba) to Umm al-Sāhik, a village of the al-Qaṭīf oasis on the Khaṭṭ coast. The second element answers to a root the lexicon uses of a scouring w

• Al-Sahmi

  A family name (nisba) attributed to Banū Sahm of Quraysh; Sahm recurs as an ancestor's name in other tribes, and al-Suhaylī is a different name on a different r

• Al-Saigh

  An occupational family name from ṣ-w-gh, the casting and forming of metal, applied above all to the goldsmith; it is also written al-Sayigh and appears in the i

• Al-Sakuni

  A family name (nisba) to al-Sakūn, one of the two divisions the genealogists enter under Kinda, and a form met in Ḥaḍramawt and afterwards in the garrison towns

• Al-Sammak

  An occupational family name from samak, fish: the sammāk is the man whose trade is fish, taking it or selling it, and the form does not say which. The same lett

• Al-Sanabisi

  A family name (nisba) to al-Sanābis on the eastern coast. The classical works this reference cites do not document the place; the same written form also arises

• Al-Saqqa

  An occupational family name from s-q-y, the giving of water: the saqqāʾ carried and sold water in the towns. It is written both السقا and السقّاء, and the two s

• Al-Sarraf

  An occupational family name from ṣ-r-f, the turning of one thing into another: the ṣarrāf exchanges coin for coin. Al-Ṣayrafī is the same trade under a differen

• Al-Sayhati

  A family name (nisba) to Sayhat on the eastern coast. The classical works this reference cites do not document the place, so the page records the name and the c

• Al-Sayyad

  An occupational family name from ṣ-y-d, taking game: in the classical lexicon the ṣayyād hunts on land as well as taking fish from the sea, and the family name

• Al-Sayyid

  A name from s-w-d, whose noun suʾdud is precedence among a people; the sayyid is their head. It later became both a form of address and a title of standing that

• Al-Shahrani

  A family name (nisba) to the tribe of Shahrān in the southern Sarāt; a separate name from al-Shihrī despite the close spelling.

• Al-Shami

  A family name (nisba) to al-Sham, which in the geographers is the whole country from the Euphrates to the edge of Egypt, divided into ajnad. It names a region,

• Al-Shammari

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

• Al-Shanni

  A family name (nisba) to Shann of Abd al-Qays. The name is also a plain Arabic word — a worn waterskin — and the proverb built on it is among the best known in

• Al-Sharii

  A family name (nisba) to a place called al-Sharīʿa — in the lexicon the watering place, the open way down to water. Places of the name are many, so the nisba po

• Al-Shaybani

  A family name (nisba) to Shaybān of Bakr ibn Wāʾil; the sources record the name Shaybān in more than one line, and al-Shaybī, built on Shayba, is a different ni