“Al”, meaning family, is used to mark the prominence of one’s lineage, and appears before the names of all the ruling clans in the Gulf. Notable examples include the Al-Saud in the Kingdom, the Al-Sabah in Kuwait, the Al-Nahyan in the United Arab Emirates, the Al-Khalifa family in Bahrain.
“It’s a reflection of the perception that we have in the Gulf,” Sultan Al-Qassemi, a Gulf based businessman, told The Media Line, adding that adoptive parents often give their children names that will assure they will become accepted in society and given jobs.
“Not having an ‘Al’ does not mean people do not come from a prominent family, and more families are using the branch names (such as) bin or ibn instead,” he said, referring to names which mark the area from which a family hails or its current residence.
“Non tribe people sometimes add tribe names because they are so large — some have 20,000 people — so it’s very hard for someone to say to them that they don’t belong to that tribe,” Al-Qassemi said. “But you never see branch names used in the same way.”
“There will soon be a decrease in tribal names as they are not as important as branch names,” he predicted. “You see all the royal families using their branch name and not their tribe name.”
“If it is happening in the Kuwait then it must be happening in other Gulf countries as well,” Al-Qassemi added.
Marjorie Kelly, Professor of Anthropology at the American University in Kuwait, said that while people in Kuwait might have changed their names, it is a phenomenon not simply confined to the Middle East.
“It’s similar to what has been done by many people in France that have added De to their family name to gain prestige,” Kelly told the Media Line.
“Family names in Kuwait give off an incredible amount of social information about the person,” Kelly’s colleague Dr. Pellegrino A. Luciano told The Media Line.
“It is safe to say that a person is “sized up” in Kuwait by their family name,” he said. “While Kuwaiti families originate from various locations in the Middle East, a great deal of prestige is given to the six or seven original families that settled and created the modern nation of Kuwait.”
“Most of these families came from Saudi Arabia,” Luciano continued. “Hence, informally people understand that there are different levels of being Kuwaiti, identifiable by name and that translates into jobs and high status positions.”
“Many ‘second class’ Kuwaitis may have the same family name as a first class Kuwaiti with the exception of an ‘Al’ or a ‘Bin’,” he said. “So by adding them to their names they become indistinguishable from the more prestigious Kuwait family name in day to day interactions or when making business deals… In short, they can piggy back on the name.”
