Over 2,000 Arab kin groups have animal names. How many of these cases have been properly explained?

What is it about?

Arab and European scholars have proposed four explanations for the adoption of animal terms as names for Arab kinship groups: the “predatory animals” hypothesis, ancestor eponymy, nickname eponymy, and the idea that the Bedouin are “closer to nature” than other people and are more likely to use terms for natural species as names than non-Bedouin. The “predatory animals” hypothesis accounts for 39% of the cases. The ancestor eponymy explanation accounts for 69% of the total. Evaluating the other two explanations – nickname eponymy and “Bedouin closeness to nature” – is more difficult. It is hard to be certain, for example, that an animal term that was applied to a group was also given as a nickname to that group’s ancestor. A search of a data base for Arab personal nicknames turned up 69 nicknames derived from terms for natural species. Of the 2,052 groups with animal names, 503 of them – 24.5% of the total – may have adopted one of these 69 nicknames to identify themselves. But in most cases, there is no confirmation that these nicknames were actually given to the groups’ ancestors. The historical record for tribes and clans is thin; we cannot just assume that a group’s animal name was also the nickname for its ancestor when we know little about this ancestor. Also, the claim that a Bedouin group’s animal name was chosen to emphasize the group’s connection to the natural world is plausible but not directly supported by evidence. We do not know how many groups deliberately adopted animal terms as names in order to highlight their Bedouin identities because we do not know the histories of their choices. Assuming that constructing a Bedouin identity was the goal in all cases is mere speculation. Also, this explanation does not account for the specificity of their choices. Why select the term Quḍāʿah (“otter”) as a group name while rejecting other terms for natural species?

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Photo by TUAN ANH TRAN on Unsplash

Photo by TUAN ANH TRAN on Unsplash

Why is it important?

This article evaluates two of the four explanations by showing how many of the total number of cases is covered by each explanation. That is, it measures the power of these two explanations in light of empirical data. It also demonstrates that the two other explanations cannot be empirically evaluated without additional information. In the absence of detailed reports about the history and ancestry of a group, claims that a group was given the nickname of its ancestor or that it chose an animal name to emphasize its Bedouin identity is speculative. The article contributes to the development of methodologies for evaluating explanations in the behavioral sciences.

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