What's in a militant's name?

BY MOHAMAD BAZZI | Newsday Middle East Correspondent

June 16, 2006

BEIRUT, Lebanon - They're like mob nicknames, with a religious tinge.

The aliases used by Islamic militants can be head-spinning, but they follow a certain logic. They're based on a widely used type of nickname in the Arab world called a kunya. The epithet starts with "Abu" and usually refers to a person's first-born son. ("Abu" means "father of.")

Militants often adopt a nom de guerre that includes an additional name that denotes their nationality or place of origin. For example, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi's given name was Ahmad Fadhil al-Khalayleh. Because his oldest son was named Musab, he was known by the kunya of "Abu Musab" or "father of Musab." He added "al-Zarqawi" to his nickname to indicate he was from the Jordanian town of Zarqa.

Someone whose alias ends with al-Masri or al-Iraqi means that he is "the Egyptian" or "the Iraqi." In some cases, a militant adopts a nickname that is not based on his son's name or his nationality. Al-Zarqawi's purported successor is called Abu Hamza al-Muhajer. The last part of his name means "the immigrant," a term that refers to the "muhajiroun," a group of early converts to Islam who fled persecution in the city of Mecca. Hamza might be his son's name or it could be a reference to one of Islam's greatest warriors.

The man who popularized using kunyas as noms de guerre was the late Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat, who was known as Abu Ammar. He did not have a son named Ammar; the nickname means "the builder."

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