Al-Hemmaly: The Meaning of My Name

Of the thousands of family names in Libya, there's a unique story about my own. -- Ahmad Al-Hemmaly.

While exploring the platform yesterday, I stumbled upon this little contest by Ecency: "The Meaning of My Name." It's an interesting contest that I'm glad to take part in.

My full name is: Ahmad Al-Taher Al-Hemmaly (أحمد الطاهر الهمّالي.)

Ahmad (أحمَد) is my given name. It's a popular given name in the Arabic world and it means "The Praised One." It's one of the names of the prophet of Islam, Prophet Muhammad ﷺ. He's referred to by that name once in the Qur'an. In Libya, it's commonly spelled as "Ahmed" (أحمِد.)

Al-Taher is my father's name. We in Libya often put the father's name in the full name. It means "the clean" or "the purified." Yes, my father has "the" as part of his name.

Al-Hemmaly is my family name. It's a big tribe in a town called Tarhuna south of the Capital Tripoli. Though my family is technically part of this tribe, we were cut off from them at my grandfather's generation. I've never been there, and I don't know who our relatives are there. Al-Hemmaly means "the Deer-like" or "the Deer-related" and there's a story behind the name.

Story Time

They say, one of our ancestors went on the Hajj journey (the Pilgrimage to Mecca) and he had to leave his newborn son in the desert.

When the boy was found alive, months later, they found him breastfeeding of a mother Deer. It took care of him the whole time. So they called him "the son of the Deer" or in the Libyan flavor of Arabic: Al-Hemmaly.

That boy is our great-great-great grandfather who's our family is named for. Or so the story goes. It's almost impossible to verify if it's true as it's based on sayings from long ago, but I like it.

What do you think?

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