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Greetings from the Academy of Saint Gabriel!
You asked for information about Arabic bynames which imply that the bearer is Christian, and particularly about <al-Masihi>. Here is what we have found.
The byname <al-Masihi> was apparently much more common in modern times than in period, used by 19th century Christians describing themselves [2, 3]. We did find one period example of it, though, a scribe in 1208 named <Tawma ibn Yusuf ibn Sarkis al-Masihi> [1]. <Masihi> derives from the Arabic word for "messiah", and the phrase <al-Masahi> means "the Christian" [5].
A more common period Arabic term for "the Christian" was <al-Nas.rani>, pronounced \an-nahs-RAHN-ee\. (The period after the 's' represents a dot under the letter.) <Nas.rani> derives from <Nazarene> [2, 4]. The term is used in the Qur'an and other Islamic theological works.
I hope this letter has been useful. Please write us again if any part of it has been unclear or if you have other questions. I was assisted in researching and writing this letter by Da'ud ibn Auda, Sion Andreas, and Talan Gwynek.
For the Academy,
Arval Benicoeur
References
[1] Catalogue of the National Library of Medicine
[2] Hughes, Thomas Patrick, _A Dictionary of Islam_ (Kazi Publications,
1994, reprinted of the 1986 ed.).
[3] Glassé, Cyril, _The Concise Encyclopedia of Islam_ (San Francisco:
Harper San Francisco, 1991).
[4] Jaschke, Richard, _English-Arabic Conversational Dictionary_.
[5] Wehr, Hans, _A Dictionary of Modern Written Arabic_, ed. Cowan,
J. Milton, 3rd ed. (Ithaca, NY: Spoken Language Services, 1976).