Juan Cole Informed Comment
The Republican Party’s Islamophobia is going wild with its fixation on Arabic names. Now Donald Trump (whose family name was originally Drumpf) has come after Somali-American Congresswoman Ilhan Omar’s name.
The naming system in contemporary America, with a forename, middle name(s) and a family surname, is only one way of naming. It is a big world out there. The Chinese have their own system. So do many African cultures, Spanish-speaking ones, and Polynesians. Mr. Drumpf’s disdain for any naming conventions but those with which he is familiar is a sign of ignorance and blinkered horizons. Worse, he weaponizes other naming conventions, attempting to use them to foment hatred and prejudice.
This use of names to stigmatize ethnic groups has a sinister history. In Germany some Jews attempted to assimilate by trading names like Isaac or Israel for the Greek Isidore, which sounded similar.
Berlin’s deputy police chief in the 1920s and early 1930s was Bernhard Weiss, who was Jewish. But Paul Joseph Goebbels, the Nazi propagandist and district leader of Berlin, taunted him as “Isidore Weiss.” It was intended as an ethnic slur, and Weiss sued more than once for libel and won, but Goebbels just paid the fine and went on with his bigotry. (Does this sound familiar?) Weiss had to flee the Nazis in March 1933, settling in London. His own police force came for him, and he had to hide beneath a coal pile in his basement.
Ilhan Omar’s full name is Ilhan Abdullahi Omar. That is what is written in her high school yearbook and she insists her name has always had this form. Ilhan is actually Ilham, the Arabic word for inspiration. The “m” got pronounced as “n” in her dialect, or just in colloquial speech.
In chapter 91:7-10 of the Qur’an, “The Sun,” we find it said of God,
The verb “to inspire” here, alhama, has the same root as “inspiration” (“ilhām“). It is a divine activity.
The “Omar” is from her father’s name, Nur Omar Mohamed. Omar was the second Caliph or vicar of the Prophet Muhammad for Sunnis, and Nur means “light,” so he is the “Light of Omar.” As is common, this element of his personal name then became Ilhan’s last name.
This part of the Arabic naming system is like the Norse, so the equivalent would be Eric Gustafsson, Eric the son of Gustaf. Or the female president of Iceland is Halla Tómasdóttir, Halla the Daughter of Tomas.
Since Arab names are now of interest to American white nationalists in the same way that Jewish ones were once of interest to figures like Goebbels, it may be worthwhile explaining how the former work.
Let’s take the famed astronomer Omar Khayyam, whose name is transliterated technically as “`Umar,” to whom irreverent quatrains or Rubáiyát are attributed.
This poetry was translated by Edward FitzGerald and published in 1859, becoming the most famous poem in the English language. I translated it more precisely as The Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyam: A New Translation from the Persian.
He is Ghiyāth al-Dīn Abū al-Fatḥ ʿUmar ibn Ibrāhīm Khayyām Nīshāpūrī
Here, Ghiyāth al-Dīn, or helper of the Faith, is an honorific (laqab).
In the Arab world it was common for fathers, once they had a son, to be named after the son. So if Omar had a son named Fatḥ, or victory/success, he would become known thereafter as Abū al-Fatḥ, the Father of Victory. In English the technical term for this is a teknonym, and in Arabic it is called a kunya.
Abū al-Fatḥ has the form of a teknonym, but in this case it is probably an honorary name not referring to any real son of Omar (he may not have had any).
So then comes his personal name, `Umar, or in common English transcription, Omar. This is the ism.
Next comes his genealogy (nasab). In this case, only his father’s name is given, so he is Omar the son of Ibrahim. For other figures it might be possible to name the grandfather and great-grandfather as well.
Lastly in the Arabic system comes the family name (nisbah), which can refer to an occupation, lineage or a place you’ve lived at least 5 years. Omar has two family names. One is Khayyām or “tent-maker,” and the legends say that his father Ibrahim was engaged in that profession.
Then we have a family name deriving from a place, Nīshāpūrī, from the city of Nishapur in eastern Iran where Omar was born and which is the site of his tomb.
Although honorifics are less common today, the other elements of the name are still in common use. In some countries, like Iran, where a lot of names are Arabic even if most are Persian, the government has adopted the modern European convention of personal name, middle name and family name. In the 1930s Reza Shah Pahlavi forced Iranians to adopt family names. Since they chose their own, they are often quite beautiful. Sometimes, though, they use occupations or lineages or places. The family name of Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, the speaker of the Iranian parliament, means “carpet weaver.”
In Egypt or Pakistan, there is no standardization. A lot of people leave out the “ibn” (“son of”) in Egypt and use their father’s personal name as their family name. Or they might use their father’s first name as a middle name and use their paternal grandfather’s first name as a family name. In Pakistan, I know families where some of the children use the nisbah as a last name and other children from the same nuclear family use the father’s first name as their last name.
In that system, I might be Juan John Dennis (my paternal grandfather was Dennis). Since I lived a long time in Cairo (coll. Masr), maybe I could add al-Masri as my last name as a nisbah.
Women’s names have the same patterns, except that they would use “bint,” daughter, instead of “ibn,” though it is common in modern societies to drop the “bint” and just use the father’s personal name as a middle or last name.
Congresswoman Ilhan Omar. Public Domain. Via Wikimedia Commons
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The Egyptian stage writer and critic Saleh Saad (d. 2005) had a daughter, Maryam. Her full name is Maryam Saleh Saad. She became famous as an actress and singer in her own right, and shortened it to Maryam Saleh. So her father’s personal name is her last name.
Here is a mix of her songs on YouTube.
Given the current capabilities of databases and Large Language Models, there is no reason the U.S. government cannot accommodate other naming systems. As it is, the FBI and the State Department often make a hash of Arab names, creating false positives when they run them against terrorism suspects and making people’s lives harder than they have to be. It would also help if Social Studies were revived in U.S. high schools and the world’s naming systems were taught. I have a feeling that if American kids cannot deal with Asian culture in the next generation, they are going to be left way behind.
As for Drumpf and James Donald Bowman, who goes by JD Vance, people in glass houses shouldn’t throw stones.
Juan Cole’s Informed Comment delivers independent, expert analysis of war, the Middle East, climate change, and U.S. foreign policy. Help sustain this work
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