The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #103975 Message #2123920
Posted By: Azizi
11-Aug-07 - 05:27 PM
Thread Name: Arabic & African names in English songs & stories
Subject: RE: Arabic & African names in English songs & stories
I've just found what I consider to be a fascinating article entitled "Jewish Names in the World of Medieval Islam."
Here's a longish excerpt from that article {which relates to this thread in that it refers to the meaning of "ben" in the poem "Abou Ben Adhem" :
"Names and naming patterns provide an unique view into the private lives of a community. Much can be learned by a community by the types of names that people give their children and live by. The Jews of the medieval Arab world were very much a part of the Arabic literary tradition and were giving their children names that are drawn from that tradition as well as the Jewish tradition. The Jews of this time period were apparently quite fluent in Arabic and were speaking it in their homes and shops. Some of the great Jewish literature of this period including works by the Rambam and Yahuda haLevi were written in Arabic….
This paper will look at the names being used Jewish men and women in the medieval Arab world with a focus on the community of Cairo Egypt. I will discuss the names that were found and the patterns that they take. In looking at medieval Jewish names one would expect to find a large number of classical Jewish names like Aaron and Avraham, however the data found shows that those names are not the overwhelming majority of names found and that classical Arabic names such as Abdullah are very common among the Jews of medieval Cairo….
The first element of any name is the personal or given name. In the Islamic world Jews would have existed in a linguistic dualism moving back and forth between Arabic and Hebrew, and in some cases Spanish and Aramaic. The names that they gave their children reflect this and represent a mix of forms. Jews appear with classical Hebrew biblical names in both the Hebrew form, and with Arabic cognates of those names which appear to be used interchangeably. Many Jews also appear in the documents with classical Arabic names. The patterns of Arabic names especially among women appear to vary somewhat between Jews and Muslims...
The vast majority of Jewish women in the medieval Muslim world had classical Arabic names...
In addition to classical Hebrew forms in men's names there are many names that are Arabic cognates of Hebrew names. As many of the figures from the Hebrew Bible also appear in the Muslim Koran it is not surprising that many Muslim men had names that are linguistically very similar to many Jewish names. Hebrew names from the Torah including Ibrahim, Isma'il, Ishaq, Ya'qub, Yusaf, Ayyub (Job), Da'ud and Sulayman among others appear commonly among Muslim men. From the letters examined from the Genizia it is fairly clear that the Jews of this time thought of the Hebrew and Arabic forms of a name were interchangeable. A large number of Jewish names in Arabic forms appear in the lists in the appendix...
The most common formation of a full name from a personal name is to add a father's name to form a patronymic. This is seen in the Torah, and in the Mishnah many of the Rabbis are identified as such. Of the 63 Rabbis mentioned in Perkei Avot, 31 are named by a personal name followed by a father's name, and three more are simply refereed to by a father's name with no personal name at all Ben Zoma, Ben Azzai, and Ben Bag Bag In most of the medieval world names appear in only one language. In the Jews of Arab lands a fertile linguistic mixing happened and names appear with both Hebrew and Arabic elements in the same name...
In the medieval Islamic world this could be formed with the grammatical contraction Ben in Hebrew, or Bar in Aramaic or with the Arabic ibin. In some cases the names have been translated simply with the patronymic indicator as `b.' leaving us to guess which form was used originally. For a woman the Hebrew Bat or the Arabic Bint would be the expected forms. In addition in Spain the Latin Filius is sometimes seen, but probably only in Spanish or Latin Christian sources not in documents written by Jews or Muslims.