Personal names of Jordanian Arab Christians: a sociocultural study

The present paper studies personal names usedby Christians in Jordan with a view to discovering their sociocultural implications. As an initial step, it proceeds to a sociolinguistic classification anddistinguishes several categories of names, such as Arabic and Arabicized versus foreign andnon-Arabicized names; names used in their Arabic and foreign forms; and names used by Christians only versus names usedby both Christians and Muslims. Then the paper attempts to uncover the social, temporal, environmental, and religious implications of names. It comes to the conclusion that names used by Christians in Jordan convey a variety ofmeanings and associations. These range from desirable social values and concepts like honor, chastity, and courage, to names of precious stones and beautiful plants andflowers, to names of strong or beautiful animals and birds, and to names denoting religious feelings and sympathies. In general, it appears that Jordanian Christians, by using both Arabic names shared with Muslims and names used only by themselves, try to strike a balance between their loyalty to their Arab country of Jordan and their attachment to their faith and churches.