What is a nasab? The Arabic chain of names, explained

In Arabic naming, the nasab is the part of a name that traces a person’s ancestry: Ibrahim ibn Sadaqatullah ibn Yusuf means Ibrahim, son of Sadaqatullah, son of Yusuf. Daughters use bint, as in Fatima bint Yusuf.

A single nasab can carry three, five or even ten generations, which makes it one of the richest family records there is — often older than any written register. It sits beside the given name (ism), an honorific such as Abu Ahmad (kunya), a descriptive name (laqab) and a family or place name (nisba).

Most genealogy software has one box for a name, so the chain is flattened into a string and the generations inside it are lost. Kinealogy keeps each person as their own entry, writes the nasab from the tree itself, and shows names in both Arabic and Latin script.

To record a nasab, start with the earliest ancestor anyone remembers and add each son or daughter beneath them. The chain then reads itself out for every descendant — and relatives can fill in the missing links from their phones.