page_title: Egyptians
section_title: Surnames
hierarchical_section_title: Egyptians / Surnames
context_page_description: Egyptians are the people inhabiting the country of Egypt. Egyptian identity is closely tied to geography. The population is concentrated in the lower Nile Valley, a small strip of cultivable land stretching from the First Cataract to the Mediterranean and enclosed by desert both to the east and to the west. This unique geography has been the basis of the development of Egyptian society since antiquity.
  The daily language of the Egyptians is a continuum of the local varieties of Arabic, the most famous dialect is known as Egyptian Arabic or Masri. Additionally, a sizable minority of Egyptians living in Upper Egypt speak Sa'idi Arabic. Egyptians are predominantly adherents of Sunni Islam with a Shia minority and a significant proportion who follow native Sufi orders. A considerable percentage of Egyptians are Coptic Christians who belong to the Coptic Orthodox Church, whose liturgical language, Coptic, is the most recent stage of the ancient Egyptian language and is still used in prayers along with Arabic.
context_section_description: Today, Egyptians carry names that have Ancient Egyptian, Arabic, Turkish, Greek and Western meanings (especially Coptic ones) among others. The concept of a surname is lacking in Egypt. Rather, Egyptians tend to carry their father's name as their first middle name, and stop at the 2nd or 3rd first name, which thus becomes one's surname. In this manner, surnames continuously change with generations, as first names of 4th or 5th generations get dropped.
  Some Egyptians tend to have Surnames based on their cities, like Monoufi (from Monufia), Banhawy (from Benha), Aswany (from Aswan), Tahtawy (from Tahta), Fayoumi (from Fayoum), Sakandary / Eskandrani (from Alexandria) and so on.
  As a result of the Long Islamic history of Egypt, and as a result of several mass migration waves into Egypt such as the Banu Hilal Exodus. Some Egyptian muslims carry historical Arabic last names. For example the surname "Al Sharif" (The Noble) from the Ashraf tribes "Al Juhaini", from Juhainah, "Al Qarmouti" from Al Qaramita, "Al Hawary" from Hawara.
  Other people have their family names based on their traditional crafts, like El Nagar (Carpenter), El Fawal (the one who sells Foul), El Hadad (Blacksmith), El Khayat (Tailor) and so on.
  The Majority of people, however, have surnames that used to be their great grand parents first names, this habit is especially dominant among the fellahin, where Surnames isn't really strong tradition. For example, if a person named Khaled Mohamed Ali has a son named Ashraf, his son's full name may become Ashraf Khaled Mohamed. Thus, a son may have a different last name than his father.
  However, it is not entirely unusual for families to have Ancient Egyptian based names (especially Coptic ones) and have their first names or surnames beginning with the Ancient Egyptian masculine possessive pronoun pa (generally ba in Arabic, which lost the phoneme /p/ in the course of developing from Proto-Semitic). For example, Bayoumi (variations: Baioumi, Bayoumi, Baioumy) "of Fayyoum", Fayyoum meaning "of the big water (yom)", Basyouni (of Aswan), Bashandi, Bakhoum ("the eagle"), Bekhit, Bahur ("of Horus") and Banoub ("of Anubis").
  The name Shenouda, which is very common among Copt, means "child of God". Hence, names and many toponyms may end with -nouda, -noudi or -nuti, which means Of God in Egyptian and Coptic. In addition, Egyptian families often derive their name from places in Egypt, such as Minyawi from Minya and Suyuti from Asyut; or from one of the local Sufi orders such as el-Shazli and el-Sawy. More examples of prominent surnames are Qozman and Habib.
  With the adoption of Christianity and eventually Islam, Egyptians began to take on names associated with these religions. Many Egyptian surnames also became Hellenized and Arabized, meaning they were altered to sound Greek or Arabic. This was done by the addition of the Greek suffix -ios to Egyptian names; for example, Pakhom to Pakhomios; or by adding the Arabic definite article el to names such as Baymoui to el-Bayoumi.
  Names starting with the Ancient Egyptian affix pu ("of the place of") were sometimes Arabized to abu ("father of"); for example, Busiri ("of the place of Osiris") occasionally became Abusir and al-Busiri. Some people might also have surnames like el-Shamy ("the Levantine") indicating a possible Levantine origin, or Dewidar indicating an Ottoman-Mamluk remnant. Conversely, some Levantines might carry the surname el-Masri ("the Egyptian") suggesting a possible Egyptian extraction. The Egyptian peasantry, the fellahin, are more likely to retain indigenous names given their relative isolation throughout the Egyptian people's history.
  With French influence, names like Mounier, Pierre, and many others became common, particularly in the Christian community.
caption: An Egyptian elder, 1860s
exif: {}