Arabic Last Names

A list by a written rule, built on 2 October 2026 and deepened on 3 October 2026 from 60 names to 151. A family name is listed when (1) English Wiktionary files its Latin spelling under 'English surnames from Arabic' (https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Category:English_surnames_from_Arabic, 412 entries on 3 October), or files the Arabic name under 'Arabic surnames' (https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Category:Arabic_surnames, 74 entries) with a Latin spelling that the entry itself gives or that English Wikipedia's article on the name prints beside the same Arabic letters (eleven names: Al-Masri, Atiyah, Haddad, Heikal, Hilal, Najjar, Raed, Sabbagh, Sarraf, Trabelsi, Yassin; the article prints Sarraf and Trabelsi with al- before the letters); (2) the entry's etymology names the Arabic word or given name behind it, or names another listed spelling as the one it is a variant of; (3) that Arabic word has its own Arabic entry on Wiktionary that carries the meaning (on the 91 cards added on 3 October every meaning printed stands in that entry's own definitions; on the 60 cards of 2 October the meaning is quoted from the English entry's etymology and the Arabic entry holds a word of the same meaning; both checked by script); and (4) the entry does not say the name is mostly found in a country outside the Arabic-speaking world (Pakistan, Bangladesh, Indonesia and others), since those names belong to other lists. The card prints the Arabic word the entry derives the name from, without its vowel marks, as it is usually written, and that word's meaning in the dictionary's own words. It is the word behind the name and not always the family's own spelling of the name in Arabic letters, so the card says 'from the Arabic word'. Where the Arabic entry defines the word as a given name, the card says 'from the Arabic given name'; it adds 'as a word' and a meaning only where the same entry also defines that spelling as an everyday word, and it prints the English form of the name where the entry gives one (Ayub and Job, Yousef and Joseph). 58 cards are of that kind, and 30 of them print no meaning. A meaning says nothing about any family that carries the name. A second reading against English Wikipedia's article on each name, where one exists, took names out on both days. On 2 October: Yasser, Sadiq, Saidi and Rassi (the article gives another Arabic word or meaning, or the Arabic entry does not carry the whole meaning); Sununu and Bahar (the entry itself says 'perhaps'); Ashkar (listed only as a variant of Askar, which we could not confirm); Wali (the article calls it a Kashmiri surname); Hashmi, Haniff, Rasool and Mehboob (South Asian spellings); and Youkhana (the entry says it is typical of the Assyrian community of Iraq). On 3 October: Saraf (the dictionary gives its use as Indian; the spelling Sarraf stays), Alim and Malik (the article gives another Arabic word), Nidal (the article gives another meaning), Shahin (the article calls the name Persian; the spelling Chahine stays), and Shami, Attia, Ayyash, Mahfouz, Naqqash, Nakash, Shihab and Chehab (no source prints the Latin spelling beside the Arabic letters); the Abbas card prints no meaning because the article and the dictionary give different ones. Spellings that the dictionary ties to no Arabic-speaking country and that are usual elsewhere (Reza, Riza, Iqbal, Usman, Qureshi, Vakil, Djibril and others) were left out at the same reading, as our own call. Some entries add that a name is mostly found in one country; those lines are not printed, because they cite no count and Wikipedia contradicts at least one of them (Saadeh). The five kinds (a quality, a thing or an animal, a trade or an office, a place or a people, a given name) are our own sorting of the dictionary's meaning. We found no public register that counts family names across the Arabic-speaking countries, so no rank or count is printed. No reader of Arabic has checked this page: every card was read against its dictionary entries and, where there is one, the Wikipedia article. Licence: English Wiktionary and English Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/). The rule, the selection and the five kinds are our own work.