Introduction to Names
Collected from the Encyclopaedia of Islam
by Basil Dragonstrike
The Encyclopaedia of Islam, Second Edition (hereafter EI2) is
widely considered one of the leading scholarly works dealing with Islam; it covers the whole of Islam; religion, geography,
culture, etc. Published in 13 volumes, from 1954 to 2005, it
contains thousands, perhaps tens of thousands, of entries.
Obviously, it is a rich source of Muslim names; indeed, too rich a
source. Anyone trying to collect all the names from EI2 would have
an overwhelming task.
Tempted to collect names from EI2, but well aware of the size of the
job, I decided to collect some of the names. How to choose?
Simple, use the "random" function of a spreadsheet. How many to
choose? Ten from each volume seemed like a reasonable number to me,
especially as I'd only be taking from volumes 1-12; volume 13
contains only indexes and a glossary.
I decided I had to make sure the random selections fit certain
requirements. These are:
- The name must be that of a person; no non-human beings, no
place, no concepts, no group/tribe of people, etc.
- The name must seem wholly Arabic; I avoided Persian,
Turkish, etc names. Of course, given the realities of onomastics
in Islamdom, some Persian, Arabized Persian, Turkish, Arabized
Turkish, etc. names may be on these lists. But I avoided
anything that I could clearly see was not Arabic.
- The person named must have lived before 1601---that is, before
the 17th century. I didn't wish to make use of SCA's "gray
period" loophole.
EI2 alphabetizes entries by listing persons by
the part of their names they are best known by. Thus, a person
may be listed by ism, kunya, nasab, or byname; in the case
of nasab or byname, they may be listed by one out of a number of
nasabs/bynames. The rest of that person's names are set off by
commas. This makes it difficult for me to be sure what the original
name's proper order should be. Hence, I have made no attempt to list
the name-element patterns found in this source. As well, I have not
distinguished between isms per se and those from kunyas,
etc., nor bynames per se and those found within nasabs, etc.
Note that EI2 does not use the LoC/ALA romanization scheme, which is
the one most often used, esp. in the SCA, and is the one used in my
other lists of names. The differences between EI2 and LoC/ALA are
few and easily explained.
- EI2 romanizes jīm (ج) as dj, LoC/ALA as j.
- EI2 romanizes qāf (ق) as ḳ, LoC/ALA as q.
- Where a single letter in Arabic is romanized in two Latin
letters, EI2 underlines the pair and LoC/ALA does not. Note this
means that in EI2 jīm (ج) actually becomes dj. In
those rare cases where tāʼ, dāl, sīn, or
kāf is followed by hāʼ, ambiguity with thāʼ,
dhāl, shīn, and khāʼ is prevented in EI2
by not underlining the pair, but in LoC/ALA by inserting a true
vertical apostrophe. For example, in the name "اَدْهَم",
pronounced "add ham", in EI2 is Adham but in LoC/ALA Ad'ham.
I have arranged the collected names into three lists: isms,
bynames,
and titular names.
Information on matters specific to each type of name will be found
at the head of each page.
I have, just now (August 2022), added the dates of the person to each list, in CE not
AH years. Note that the particular name element might not be from
that particular date; for instance, if someone has a four generation
nasab, the oldest name will be from well before the date
given. In dates, "b." means "born," "d." means "died," "c." means
"circa," and "fl." means flourished--that is, the person was alive at that time. Some dates can only be given
approximately, such as "early Fatimid period," etc. A hyphen in a
date indicates from X to Y, while a slash indicates a doubt as to
which year; thus "873/875-929" means from somewhere between 873 and
875, to 929. Note that when the years separated by a slash are adjacent, this probably means one AH year that covers two CE years