Arabic Name Generator

A classical Arabic name has up to five parts, and each one does a different job.

The ism is the personal name — Muhammad, Layla, Khalid. The kunya comes before it and names the bearer as a parent: Abu Yusuf, "father of Yusuf"; Umm Salma, "mother of Salma". It is a courtesy form, and using it is warmer than using the ism. The nasab is the lineage, built with ibn or bin, "son of", and bint, "daughter of", and it can chain back through several generations: Ali ibn Ahmad ibn Yusuf. The laqab is an epithet or honorific, often ending in al-Din, "of the faith" — Salah al-Din, "righteousness of the faith", is a laqab, not a surname. The nisba, finally, is an adjective of attribution formed with the definite article al- and an -i ending: al-Baghdadi, "the one from Baghdad"; al-Haddad, "the smith".

Written in full, the order is kunya, ism, nasab, laqab, nisba. Most people in daily life use two or three of the five.

Two things to keep straight. First, al- is the definite article and it assimilates in speech before roughly half the alphabet: al-Rashid is pronounced ar-Rashid, al-Salam is as-Salam. Transliterations vary wildly on whether to write what is spelled or what is said, which is why the same family appears as al-Sayed, as-Sayed and El-Sayed.

Second, the theophoric pattern. Abd means "servant", and it is only ever used in a compound with a name of God: Abd Allah, "servant of God"; Abd al-Rahman, "servant of the Merciful". Abd on its own is not a name, and pairing it with a non-divine word is the single most common error in fiction.

Meanings are unusually transparent because Arabic is built from three-consonant roots. Once you can see that k-r-m gives Karim, Karima and karam, "generosity", or that n-w-r gives Noor, Anwar and Munir, all from "light", the vocabulary opens up quickly.