Many Bedouin families, lineages, and tribes are named after plants.

What is it about?

This study is much more comprehensive than previous research, which focused on only a small number of the plant terms that are used as group names. These include Ṭalḥah, “acacia tree” and Dhuhl, “balsam tree of Mecca,” both of which were used as names for Bedouin tribes and kinship groups in pre-Islamic times. By covering the entire range of Arabic plant terms (ex. Rayḥān, “sweet basil”; Dawḥah, “great and lofty tree”) it shows that group names derived from plant terms are more common than previously thought. By providing the scientific taxonomy for each species referenced (ex. “sweet basil” is classified as Ocimum basilicum), it enables the reader to determine exactly what each name means.

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Photo by Rabah Al Shammary on Unsplash

Photo by Rabah Al Shammary on Unsplash

Why is it important?

The list is part of an effort to explain why humans name themselves after plants and other living things. In the nineteenth century the dominant explanation was "totemism," that is, the theory that "primitive" people thought that they were literally descended from plants and, consequently, took their names. There was never any empirical evidence of this for the Arab case. As for applying the theory to "primitive" people, this classification – that is, the division of the human species into "primitive" and "advanced" – is now understood as a mistake. Hence, the theory of "totemism" has generally been discarded. Yet the question it addressed is still important. Anthropologists and philosophers still seek to understand how human beings appropriate features of the natural world to create cultural and social categories and apply these categories to people.

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