Some say that if a man knew his friend’s mother’s name, it is seen as shameful.
“I remember back when I was in high school, two guys started a fight as one of them has been telling his friend’s mother’s name to other pupils,” said Waheeb Atallah, a 29-year-old marketer.
“It was so intense that the school administration had to intervene. At the end of the day, we asked them about the fight and one of them said that mentioning a mother’s name in his tribe is taboo and that’s why he started a fight.”
The problem is not simply a matter of someone knowing the name of a person’s mother, according to Khaled Al-Harby, a 34-year-old schoolteacher, but rather it is when a man knows the name and then starts mocking it in public.
“This strange attitude is usually prevalent among young tribal men. They want to keep their female family members in a sacred place where no other men can reach them or even know they exist,” he said.
“What happens is that when other men know anything about your female family members they start teasing you about them using a sarcastic tone that annoys you and makes you want to punch them in the face.”
The trend of not mentioning the names of female family members is fading, according to Abu Abdullah, a 34-year-old businessman. “People are now more open than before. I’m more than proud to reveal my mother’s name to anyone who asks me,” he said. “Although I wasn’t before when I was younger as I feared people would tease me and call me using her name and not my own.”
Tariq Ahmed is more than proud to be called Abu Deema (Deema’s father). “Where I work, people call me Abu Deema with respect. I really don’t mind that because when you really look at it, in our tradition they call the father using his son’s name for pride and I don’t have boys, so they refer to me using the name of my daughter, who is my pride,” he added.
“Aside from that, King Abdulaziz himself used to refer to himself by his sister’s name. He called himself Akho Noura, which is Arabic for Noura’s Brother.”
