Long Arabic Name Generator

Classical Arabic names are long because they are built from up to five separate parts, each with its own job. The ism is the personal name (Muhammad, Fatima, Khalid). The kunya is an honorific formed from the eldest child's name, Abu (father of) or Umm (mother of), and it usually comes first. The nasab is the lineage: ibn (son of) or bint (daughter of) followed by the father's name, and it can run back several generations, as in Ali ibn Abi Talib ibn Abd al-Muttalib. The nisba, beginning with al- and ending in -i (or -iyya for women), tells you a tribe, city, or profession: al-Qurashi, al-Baghdadi, al-Andalusi, al-Zahrawi. Finally, a laqab is a descriptive title or nickname such as al-Rashid (the rightly guided) or Salah ad-Din (righteousness of the faith).

Put together, a full name reads like a compact biography. Abu al-Walid Muhammad ibn Ahmad ibn Rushd al-Qurtubi tells you the man is called Muhammad, that his son is al-Walid, that his father was Ahmad and grandfather Rushd, and that he comes from Córdoba. Europeans shortened this to Averroes. In everyday life people used only a piece of the whole name, and which piece depended on the relationship: a kunya between equals, the ism among family, the nisba or laqab in formal writing.

The list below mixes documented names of scholars, caliphs, poets, and early Muslim women with newly assembled names that follow the same rules, so you can lift one whole or borrow a kunya, a nasab, and a nisba to build your own.