Adding a nesbat (Arabic: نسبة nisbah "relation") is the practice of adding a word at the end of a person's name as a specifier [1].
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Nisba in Arabic means to relate someone or something to another thing or person. This is done by adding a suffix (i for male, iyya for female) to the end of the word. The suffix "i" was taken from the Persian language. As an example, the word Arabi (عربي) means an Arab or Arabian; it relates a person (the Arab) or a thing (Arabic thing) to a culture (Arabic culture).
In this sense it is not necessarily part of the name of the person neither does it necessarily have to be permanent.
Arabic names do not include family names or surnames, but rather patronymics (nasab), where the name of the person is followed by the name of his father, usually linked by ibn or bin ('son'). Patronymics may be long as they may include all known forefathers. When a name is simplified to one or two ancestors, it may become confused with other persons' names, so an additional specifier, a nisbat, may be added as an attribute.
A nisba is usually prefixed by al ('the') and may be to almost anything:
One can have more than one nisba, one can be related to a city, a clan, a profession and a person at the same time. Examples include:
The nisba is optional but is quite widespread.
These additions have migrated to Iranian names, but since Iranians use family names, this additions have sometimes become family names
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