- published: 21 Jul 2010
- views: 1945245
Asad sometimes written as Assad (Arabic: أسد) is one of many Arabic male given names meaning "lion", each denoting some aspect of the animal . It is used in nicknames such as Asad Allāh one of the nicknames for Ali ibn Abi Talib. (Although "Assad" is the standard spelling in English, "Asad" is the more accurate transliteration, corresponding to the Arabic spelling, and is used by careful scholars.)
Among prominent people named Asad or "Assad" are:
The Assads are an Alawite family from the Latakia region (specifically Qardaha), which has held political power in Syria since 1970. The family has produced two presidents:
Other family members include:
A name is a word or term used for identification. Names can identify a class or category of things, or a single thing, either uniquely, or within a given context. A personal name identifies a specific unique and identifiable individual person, and may or may not include a middle name. The name of a specific entity is sometimes called a proper name (although that term has a philosophical meaning also) and is a proper noun. Other nouns are sometimes, more loosely, called names; an older term for them, now obsolete, is "general names".
The use of personal names is not unique to humans. Dolphins also use symbolic names, as has been shown by recent research. Individual dolphins have distinctive whistles, to which they will respond even when there is no other information to clarify which dolphin is being referred to.
Caution must be exercised when translating, for there are ways that one language may prefer one type of name over another. A feudal naming habit is used sometimes in other languages: the French sometimes refer to Aristotle as "le Stagirite" from one spelling of his place of birth, and English speakers often refer to Shakespeare as "The Bard", recognizing him as a paragon writer of the language. Finally, claims to preference or authority can be refuted: the British did not refer to Louis-Napoleon as Napoleon III during his rule.