Iraqi Name Generator

Most Iraqis do not use a fixed surname in daily life. The standard form is a chain of given names: your own, your father's and your grandfather's, so Ahmed Jassim Mohammed is Ahmed, son of Jassim, son of Mohammed, and his sister is Zainab Jassim Mohammed. On documents and in formal settings a tribal or regional name is added with Al-: Al-Jubouri, Al-Dulaimi, Al-Obaidi, Al-Shammari and Al-Tamimi are among the largest tribes, while Al-Tikriti, Al-Samarrai, Al-Basri and Al-Mosuli simply mean 'from Tikrit, Samarra, Basra or Mosul'. Adults are routinely addressed by a kunya, Abu or Umm plus the eldest son's name.

Iraqi given names have a distinct flavour. Shia families in the south favour names of the Imams and their households (Haidar, Hussein, Abbas, Kadhim, Sajjad, Karrar, Murtadha, Zahraa, Hawraa, Batool) and compounds like Abdulzahra and Abdulhussein that are rarely heard elsewhere; Sunni families lean toward Omar, Othman, Harith, Muthanna and Wathiq. Iraqi spelling follows the local dialect, so you see Jassim rather than Qasim, Kadhim rather than Kazim, and Dhurgham or Muntadhar with the dh sound.

Iraq is not only Arab. The generator also includes Chaldean and Assyrian Christian names from the Nineveh plain (Sargon Yousif, Ramina Toma, Matti Hanna) and Kurdish names from Erbil and Sulaymaniyah (Rebwar, Hemin, Shilan, Avin), which usually take the father's name or a tribal name like Zebari or Barwari.