In
Arabic, this means "
son of". It is often written as the very similar
bin, due to difficulty in translating Arabic
grammar into
English.
This word is often encountered because Arabic
names are commonly in the form of:
where
A is the person's first name,
B is their father's first name, and
C the family name. Hence, "Mohammad
ibn Sultan Al-Mustafa'a" would denote Mohammad,
son of Sultan, of the Al-Mustafa'a
family.
Chosen names in Arabic are often recycled from a fairly
limited pool, making this type of construction necessary. Unfortunately, even still, many names end up being very similar, varying in only one of the three names, or sometimes with all three names the same, but just in a different order. This can make things very confusing for
outsiders. Another
side-effect is a tendancy to list
western style names in the same fashion on many
documents. In my case, for example, I was listed as "Sean ibn Alan Nichols" on some papers.
Other Arabic words defining
familial relationships include
Bint (
daughter of),
Abu (
father of) and
Umm (
mother of).