Ever been confused by the way the Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas, is sometimes called ‘Abu Mazen’ instead? Well, the reason dates back to an ancient tradition of Arabic names, and is the reason that some of my friends here refer to me as ‘Abu Noah’.
In the Arab world, when a man has his first son and gives him a name, say Omar, people around him often begin to refer to him as ‘Abu Omar’ – the father of Omar, or Omar’s daddy. Similarly, the mother is called ‘Um Omar’ the mother of Omar. So ‘Abu Mazen’ simply tells you that the president has a son called Mazen.. he is Mazen’s daddy!
Linguistically this is called a kunya, an honorific name as the father or mother of someone. Using this name can indicate closeness or affection with the person, but also respect or reverence as it is more polite than using their first name. Sometimes abu is paired with something less concrete than the son’s name though. My friend Nazmi, for example, is known as ‘Abu Sayeed’, the father of happiness, because that describes his personality. And some people affectionately named Noah ‘Abu Khudood’ when he was born, which means the father of cheeks!
There are several other interesting patterns in Arabic names, but one in particular has caused me some inconvenience. Arabs pass on the name of their father and grandfather to their children as middle names – so Noah’s name should really be Noah Daniel (his dad) Eric (his granddad) Green. Instead we just chose middle names that we liked (as is custom in the West). When it was time to register his birth the hospital simply could not understand that I didn’t want the names of his father and grandfather on the birth certificate, and it took a good deal of persuasion that this was okay and legal to choose other middle names for him!
Similarly, when I went to register my car, the officer didn’t know what to do when he saw that my passport simply said ‘Daniel Green’. “Where are your father’s and grandfather’s names?” he asked, puzzled. The problem was that the official form has spaces for these names that had to be filled from the passport. After a few minutes of consultation with his superior he brought me my new car licence and showed me his solution.. the four spaces for my official name now said: Daniel Green Green Green!
I wonder if any of you have any good stories about names in different cultures that you’d like to share?
Dan's Reflections 
Oh great post Dan. Well, talking about names in different cultures. For people staying in residence here they put their names on the doors, so they had my name on the suite door with another girl’s name called Sarah. The girl complained about being my roommate before she saw me for one reason, she thought I am a Russian guy. Basically Dima in Russia is a male name.
Thanks Dan, First I wanna claim that am the first one who called you ‘Abu Noah’ 🙂 .
Actually the Kunya is something lovely and very special in our culture. I have a personal story that. I’m now 24 years old, when I was 5 we had a neighbour called ‘abu al-abed’ and my older brother was always saying that I look like him so he named me ‘abu al-abed’ after that great man, the funny thing that now I’ve being called ABU AL-ABED for 19 years and am really happy of that cause it gives me some special feeling to have a kunya while am still young. my parents, uncles, aunts, cosines, some teachers, friend’s even my friend’s parents used to call me ABU AL-ABED. all of that made me love that name and insist to name my first son ABED cause whatever I call my son , no one will call me anything but abu al-abed.. That’s what I wanted to share. 🙂
Hey Dan, really enjoyed reading this and the ‘Abu’ thing has confused me in the past. When I went to China, people would often asked me what my name meant or about the meaning of my family name. When I said ‘Johnson’ they used to think that I was literally son of John (Even though my dad’s name is Gary) I then told them that Sarah is actually a Hebrew name and explained the ‘meaning’ that way. In China sometimes the parent will name their child with attributes that they wish for their son/daughter to have, Some names translate as ‘abundance of wealth’ or ‘true happiness’. I asked my students to give me a Chinese name and they called me ‘Tian Xing’ which means ‘sweetheart’ as in I had a kind and soft heart. This was a characteristic that they loved in a English teacher who usually let them play games over doing text book work. Thanks for the post, look forward to the next one. x
I love the way you describe it Dan. it’s actually pretty weird to Arabs knowing that people in the West don’t use their father’s and grandfather’s names in their official paper work. to be honest if they didn’t do that in Jordan a lot of things will be confusing because as you know the families in Jordan usually name at least 2 boys from the same generation Mohammad, when you add to that the older and younger people with the same name it’ll be really confusing. I think it’s also a kind tribute to reference your father’s name when you tell about yourself to people.
Don’t forget that at a younger age boys and girls are referred to as “Ibn Saleh” or “Ibn Mona” Which means the son of Saleh or the son of Mona. Sometimes it also goes to the extreme of using “Ibn Um Omar” for example, which means The son of Omar’s mother.
Lovely post. Thanks for sharing.
In Russian they also have a similar custom- the ochestva – men and women add their father name after theirs in introducing each other or referring to one other , at other times they use their last name. So Dan, you would be Dan Ericovich! And if you were a woman let’s call you Dana, you would be Dana Ericovna. We seem to have lost of lot in our western cultures in our naming tha ties us to our family history.
-April
Well…..not knowing my grandfather (or his name), got me into a lot of trouble trying to cross the Israeli border!! They insisted that I give them a name – so I randomly picked a name out of thin air and they accepted it 🙂
Dear Dan ,,, I really enjoyed your interview this morning at Roya Tv and i heard about your blog in the interview, so i wanted to leave a comment regarding the names issue that i have come across while i was in Pakistan .
The issue is there are names called ” Asami Murakabeh” which is a name of a person that consists of more than one name for his first name i.e. ” Jean Claude ” or ” Muhammad Ali ” … so when a person has a name like that in Pakistan when he writes his name he should separate his name from his father’s name by writing s/o ( son of ) or d/o ( daughter of ) between his name and his father’s name … so the name is written like that : Muhammad Ali s/o Baloch Akbar . 🙂
Regards
Well, my Arab friend has admitted he doesn’t understand certain names we use. Caleb is too much like their word for dog and Doug is too much like our word for dog.
On the flip side, I can’t help but read Fatima in a “fat ma” kind of way until I hear it pronounced which is much much better than how it looks.