When I listen to news reports on the radio about Iraq, they often start out referring to the former ruler as “Saddam Hussein” and then continue to refer to him as “Saddam.” Is that like calling someone “John Doe” and later on, “John”?
Yes, Saddam is his first name. His full name was Saddam Hussein Abd al-Majid al-Tikriti, and I think Iraqis always referred to him as Saddam, which is part of why he’s frequently referred to in the news.
Isn’t that like referring to Hilter as Adolf?
Yes. But ‘Hitler’ only means one thing to most people. Take a look at the Wikipedia disambiguation for Hussein, which features at least two other people who regularly make it into the news. ‘King Hussein’ causes enough double-takes already.
Not really. Arabic names work differently. “Hussein” isn’t a family name like Hitler. Hussein was the given name of his father. The full name, Saddam Hussein Abd al-Majid al-Tikriti means roughly, “Saddam, son of Hussein Abd al-Majid, the Tikriti (from Tikrit).”
I think that Abd is short for Abdul.
Some names will have Mhd in them which is short for Mohammad.
Oops. Mohd.
Questions like “Is X a first name?” or “Is Y a last name?” are not terribly helpful. When they are asked, often there is the assumption that, as in most European name systems, first name = given name, and last name = family name. As others have explained, it doesn’t work like that for Arabic names. Other ways why it doesn’t work include:
(1) Systems where first name = family name, and last name = given name. This is very common, and is found in China, Hungary, Japan and Korean. But people coming om those places often reverse their names in a western European or Amrican context – which can confuse even more.
(2) Systems without family names, e.g., Icelandic, where the last name is generally based on the father’s given name.
(3) Systems where it’s common to have only one name, e.g., Indonesian.
Is the way his name is treated in the Western media the same as any other Arabic person’s name would be treated? For example, General Nasser in Egypt (Gamal Abdel Nasser) was referred to as Nasser. Is there a general rule that applies to everyone, and if so, what is it? Bear in mind, I’m not asking how they’re referred to in their own countries, but in the Western media. It just seems weird that we don’t refer to Tony Blair as “Tony” but we call Saddam Hussein “Saddam.”
Some Arabic countries use surnames and some don’t. I believe “Nasser” was the former Egyptian president’s surname, so that was used. However, as has been pointed out, “Hussein” was not Saddam’s surname, so “Saddam” was used instead (and “Saddam” was what he was called by Iraqis, anyway).
It’s not. It means “servant of.”
“Abdul” is actually a misunderstanding of the sequence “abd” plus something else. What we know as “Abdullah” is actually “abd-Allah.” In proper Arabic, “Abdul” is not a name. There has to be something after the “abd-al.”