As Sudan’s president pardons the British schoolteacher jailed for allowing her students to name a teddy bear “Mohammed,” Slate answers: what are the official rules for naming people and things after the prophet? An abridged version of the article appears below:
For Mohammed, there is no prohibition on the name in any religious text, but Mohammed is so venerated that worshippers all know to use his name in a respectful way. Proper etiquette excludes giving the name to objects or to animals, but business names are okay. Maybe. Deeds are judged based on a person’s intent, so whether an act is an insult ultimately depends on motive.
In some Muslim countries, almost all males take a religious name, either Mohammed or one of the prophet’s other names, Ahmed, Mahmoud, or Mustafa. But if you’re in the Middle East, you won’t ever hear anyone calling out, “Hey, Mohammed” to a friend on the street, because the name is too important for casual use. Instead, males named Mohammed go by another first name instead.
In Egypt, compound names caused a major administrative problem in the mid-20th century, when the government introduced a registry to manage state benefits. An Egyptian male’s full name traditionally included his given name, followed by his father’s and grandfather’s names. But if each of these relatives was called Mohammed-something-else, then the names simply grew too long and unmanageable. As a result, compound names was banned in Egypt about half a century ago.
What about Jesus? British and American Protestants have historically taken a more conservative view on religious names, and it wasn’t until the 20th century that naming a baby after an angel ceased to be sacrilegious. Around World War II, many Protestants started giving their sons names like Michael and Gabriel; before, most persons with those names would be Irish Catholics or German Lutherans.
Jesus has been a common first and last name in Iberian countries since at least the 14th or 15th century, which carried into Latin America. For many Catholics from Spanish and Portuguese cultures, naming a child is considered a way to honor God rather than a violation of a commandment.
Very interesting post, Curzon. I did not know that Muslims named Mohammed were not actually addressed by that name.