ACADEMY OF SAINT GABRIEL REPORT 1009
http://www.s-gabriel.org/1009
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16 Jul 1998
From: Jodi McMaster 

Greetings from the Academy of St. Gabriel!

You wrote asking for general information on Arabic names and
specifically about the name "BinYashmir" as a surname for a man or a
woman.

For most of our period, people generally did not have fixed surnames as
we think of them. These more fluid second names are referred to
generically as "bynames." The most common form of bynames were based
upon the name of the individual's father, a form called a "patronymic."
If the father's name were Yasir, for instance, and the son Mohamed, then
the son would be known as "Mohamed ibn Yasir," 'Mohamed, son of Yasir'.
Yasir's daughter, Yasmin, would be known as "Yasmin bint Yasir,"
'Yasmin, daughter of Yasir'.  A variation on this practice was to use
the name of the place where the father was from: "Mohamed ibn
al-Yaskuri" means 'Mohammed, son of the man from Yaskur'.

We did not find the particular byname, "BinYashmir," in which you were
interested.  It resembles the Arabic form for a patronymic (a byname
based upon the name of the person's father) described above, but we were
unable to find the name "Yashmir" to put in the place of "Yasir" in the
example.  The closest we found were al-Yaskuri (pre-11th century) [1],
Yasin [2], and Yasir [3], translated in the examples above.

For more detailed information and for more names, we recommend you look
at the following articles from the Known World Heraldic Symposiums:

        Da'ud ibn Auda, "Arabic Naming Practices," KWHS 1987, p. I-39.
   
        Mustapha al-Muhaddith, "Arabic Personal Names from the         
        Futuwwah," KWHS 1989, pp. I-113.

        Da'ud ibn Auda, "Arabic Names and Naming Practices,"
        KWHS 1993, II-23, now available on-line at:

        http://www.panix.com/~mittle/names/daud/arabic-naming/ 

You can buy these from Free Trumpet Press (which can be reached from
www.sca.org/heraldry) or you can ask your kingdom's principal herald for
photocopies. 

We hope this letter has been helpful.  Please write us again if any part
of it has been unclear or if you have other questions.  Arval Benicoeur,
Da'ud ibn Auda, Talan Gwynek and Sion Andreas contributed comments
and/or research for this letter.

For the Academy,

   AElfwyn aet Gyrwum

_____________________

References:

[1] Dodge, Bayard, ed.,  _The Fihrist of al-Nadim, Vol. II_, p. 1127
(New York: Columbia University Press, 1970).

[2] Schimmel, Annemarie, _Islamic Names_ (Edinburgh: Edinburgh
University Press, 1989),  p. 31.

[3] Al-Ja'fari, Fatima Suzan, _Muslim Names_ (Tacoma, Maryland: American
Trust Publications, 1977; Lagos, Nigeria: Islamic Publications Bureau,
1977, 1982),  p. 45.