Greeting, leave-taking and address

This lesson asks you to identify conventions of greeting, courtesy and address, and to use them appropriately when you speak. The museum offers two: how a greeting is given on meeting and on parting, and how a person is honoured by a kunya. The phrases you practise, regional variants, everyday formality and body language, your class brings. ¹

Notice the occasions for the greeting in the record: on meeting and on parting. Then compare how you would address an older person, a friend and a stranger, and what changes between them.

Many people in the records are known by a kunya. The Kuwaiti encyclopaedia of jurisprudence says that a kunya is a name that begins with ab, father, or umm, mother, such as Abu Abd Allah or Umm al-Khayr ². It is a name besides the given name and the laqab, used with them or alone to honour its bearer ². A laqab is a byname that praises or blames, while the kunya is what begins with ab or umm ^{2 3}. The encyclopaedia adds that among the Arabs kunyas were so common that they sometimes overcame the proper names ².

This is the definition of one jurists' encyclopaedia, and it adds that al-Jurjani counts ibn and bint as well ². The record does not say how kunyas are used in speech today, so listen for them in the dialogues your class hears.

The encyclopaedia says a kunya is used with the given name or alone to honour its bearer ². Think of a way of addressing someone in your own language that shows respect: why does it show respect, and would a stranger understand it?

• Kunya: the definition, the related words laqab and ism, and what the jurists say about a kunya for a child.
• Greeting with peace: the meaning of taslim in the language and in the jurists' usage.

Read the records on the greeting of peace and on the kunya. Write a short role-play in which two people meet, honour each other by a name that begins with Abu or Umm, and take leave.