It was created by orientalist writers like Lovecraft as an "exotic" name and subsequently popularized in the Anglo literatisphere as a stock Arab character name. doesn't really exist in the Arabic-speaking world as an independent name, even if it's become common in western countries.
It comes from the word "abd" (عبد) in Arabic, which means servant or slave, combined with "ul" or "al" (ال), Arabic's only definitive article. "Al" can also express possession. It's often used as part of theonyms like Abdallah, meaning literally "servant of God," or like Kareem Abd-ul-Jabbar's name which means "servant of the mighty."
This post brought to you by a high person taking a week off work
Is it a common shorthand for Abdallah or Abdelrahman or something in Arabic? I have met people who told me that Abdul is their name. Is that just a comfortable nickname like introducing yourself as Johnny if your name is Jonathan or is it an example of being pressured into accepting an unnatural shorthand to make a foreign name easy to remember/pronounce, which is very common here?
My guess is it's anglicization and they just chose to stick with it. A lot of European immigrants did the same thing with their names where some Anglo heard what they said and wrote something similar down.
I think it may be more common in western countries where Abdul has already become a known Arab name. But like no Jordanian or Egyptian person I know has ever used that for a nickname. But Moody for Mahmoud I've heard, or like Dowdy or Doody for Dawood.
Lovecraft didn’t invent it. In fact a lot of the “Inventions” of orientalist writers are more like transplantation of other cultures or misunderstandings rather than outright fabrications.
Damn, my bad comrade. I could have sworn one of the first known uses of Abdul in English was Lovecraft's Abdul Alhazred character. I'll edit the post to take that out.
Abdul Alhazred was apparently a punny nickname Lovecraft gave himself as a youth in reference to his love of books
Of course, and I should have considered that before I labeled something not a "real" name. Very bad prescriptivist habit.
Kareem Abd-ul-Jabbar’s name which means “servant of the mighty.”
TIL about this based as hell name.
Paula Abdul in shambles, that's her actual last name (per Wikipedia, was her father's last name too) and I'm p sure that Syria is Arabic-speaking
It is. I kind of put my foot in my mouth with the original post title which said that Abdul wasn't a "real" name, and that's obviously not true.
That said Abdul is an interesting last name because it's still not really used by itself in most Arabic-speaking countries, at least not in my experience. Maybe her dad changed his name from something else when he moved to Brazil?
Mandarin is so idiomatic and all its idioms are so illustrative. I'd love a story where like puppy and scrambled egg are used as insults.
those four-character phrases in Chinese
if anyone wants to learn more (they're fun) they're called chengyu
Hitting me like a brick that Chengyu and Chengdu both use the character 成 and now I want to know why
in chengyu the cheng means "fixed; ready-made"
in chengdu the cheng means... there are some theories but it's probably the same sense of "established, made into"
"Three years to become a metropolis," would be a great title for a Chengdu history book.
Years ago I had a guitar student who wished to be called Abdul. I was surprised.
Hope your week off is treating you well. Any chance you still have a copy of the tech bro Mao pic?
Is that something I posted a while ago, or talked about posting? Like most Burgerlanders I have the memory of a guppy.
Sorry, not ringing any bells. Best I can do for you is a cyborg Lenin. :cyber-lenin:
Damn. Maybe I’m mixing you up with someone in the Libre vanguard. Someone has this picture of Mao as a Silicon Valley hipster and I want it so bad
