Saddam International Airport

[Tmy]

It still makes me laugh how he named the airport after himself. What I dont get is why its just his first name? Why not Saddam Hussain Intl.? Unless theres another airport named "Hussain Intl Airport".

Should we be destroying all those statues of Saddam? They belong to the people of Iraq! Shouldnt they get to destroy them.

[Rose]

Maybe Saddam prefers just using his first name so that his kids won't be tempted to claim the airport as their own. As for the statues, from the looks of it, we could put all of our forces to destroying statues and portraits full time and still leave plenty for the locals to get rid of.

[aerocontrols]

Originally posted by Tmy
Should we be destroying all those statues of Saddam? They belong to the people of Iraq! Shouldnt they get to destroy them.

You mean like this? (http://www.thesun.co.uk/article/0,,2-2003160243,00.html)

I think a lot of Iraqis are still afraid of him, but they're beginning to get over it.

MattJ

[Jedi Knight]

Originally posted by Tmy
It still makes me laugh how he named the airport after himself. What I dont get is why its just his first name? Why not Saddam Hussain Intl.? Unless theres another airport named "Hussain Intl Airport".

Should we be destroying all those statues of Saddam? They belong to the people of Iraq! Shouldnt they get to destroy them.

Saddam used his first name because Saddam thought he was King Nebuchadnezzar. If you look at Baghdad and other areas of Iraq topographically, Saddam was rebuilding Iraq from the Old Testament and given his rhetoric in the past twenty years, perhaps believed that Iraq would lead the Muslims against Israel again.

He is insane.

JK

[Tmy]

Insane like a fox!

Everything he's ever done has revolved around self preservation and retention of power. Its worked for what, 20 years or so.

I dont think he's crazy. Otherwise he'd be throwing chemical weapons around like water balloons. Or he wouldve martyred himself back in 91'. Even now he's on the down low so he doesnt get another crusie missle up his mustache.

[karl]

Originally posted by Tmy
It still makes me laugh how he named the airport after himself. What I dont get is why its just his first name? Why not Saddam Hussain Intl.? Unless theres another airport named "Hussain Intl Airport".


Not all cultures have last names. In some, people go by only one name and state their father's name and/or their place of origin when they need to be more specific. (Some ancient Greek philosophers like Thales from Miletos and Pythagoras of Samos spring to mind. And Tolkien fans may recall Aragorn, son of Arathorn, but that way of stating heritage also exists in the real world.)

Saddam's name is Saddam, plain and simple. Hussein was his father's name. He grew up in a small village just outside Tikrit. Hence the construction "Saddam Hussein al-Tikriti," which is more formal and means "Saddam, son of Hussein, from Tikrit."

[Tmy]

Stop exposing my cultural ignorance!

BAH! lets just rename it New LaGuardia Airport. For that matter Baghdad will now be known as New-New York.

[Ian Osborne]

There's a mosque in Birmingham, UK, called the Saddam Hussain Mosque.

[Advocate]

From what I have been told, it is common in some Muslim countries to take your father's first name as your last name. I know from a friend from Malaysia that this is how names are done among Muslims there. I have heard that other countries do this as well but I do not know if Iraq is one of them. Would this make Saddam's eldest son Uday Saddam? Is the way his sons names are reported in the US incorrect?

[Skeptic]

Not all cultures have last names. In some, people go by only one name and state their father's name and/or their place of origin when they need to be more specific. (Some ancient Greek philosophers like Thales from Miletos and Pythagoras of Samos spring to mind. And Tolkien fans may recall Aragorn, son of Arathorn, but that way of stating heritage also exists in the real world.)

Saddam's name is Saddam, plain and simple. Hussein was his father's name. He grew up in a small village just outside Tikrit. Hence the construction "Saddam Hussein al-Tikriti," which is more formal and means "Saddam, son of Hussein, from Tikrit."

Er... not exactly, but close.

Like most people, traditionally, Arabs did not have a last name, but a person was known as "the son of...". A traditional arab "full name" would be something like "Saddam Ibn-Muhammad Ibn-Mahmud al-Tikriti"--Saddam, the son of Muhammad, the son of Mahmud, from the city (or country, or tribe, or clan, etc.) of Tikrit". There is no "last name" in the western sense.

"Saddam Hussein", however, IS a first and last name in the western style of a first name followed by a family name, since this style of naming people eventually penetrated throughout the world.

There is, of course, an overlap: in many cases, when an arab took a "western" last name for practical reasons, he chose as a last name his clan or city's name. So often "Muhammad ibn-Mahmud ibn-Ali al-Tikriti" became westernized as "Muhammad Tikrit(i)".

A similar thing happened with jews. Traditionally, a jew was known as (say) "Aharon ben Yosef be-Rabi Yochanan ha'Cohen": Aharon, the son of Yosef, the descendant of Rabi Yochanan, who was a Cohen (a descendant of the priests of the temple--and therefore, so is Aharon himself).

When someone from a Cohenite or Levite family (descendant from the tribe of Levi) took a last name when such names became a legal necessity during the 18th century in Europe, they almost invariably chose the name "Cohen", "Levi", or something very similar (such as Cahana--aramaic for "priest"--or Katz, which in hebrew is the acronym for "Cohen Tzedek", "a righteous priest".) So, once again, there is an overlap.

[Hypocolius]

Originally posted by Ian Osborne
There's a mosque in Birmingham, UK, called the Saddam Hussain Mosque.

Until 1991 one of the main roads in Lusaka, Zambia was called Saddam Hussain Boulevard, (It was where most of the US Embassy staff lived ironically). It was rapidly re-named as Los Angeles Boulevard!

[Tricky]

You know, there's already an airport named for Bush. It's Bush Intercontinental Airport (sometimes called Bush Incontinental Airport by this irreverent punster) in Houston, named after Daddy Bush.

I often wonder if the pilots that use Houston as a home base get tired of being called "Bush Pilots".

[Checkmite]

Originally posted by Rose
As for the statues, from the looks of it, we could put all of our forces to destroying statues and portraits full time and still leave plenty for the locals to get rid of.

You can say that again. The sculptures and murals are all over the place! Talk about vanity...Saddam leaves Ramesses the Great eating his dust.

[karl]

Originally posted by Skeptic

Er... not exactly, but close.

Like most people, traditionally, Arabs did not have a last name, but a person was known as "the son of...". A traditional arab "full name" would be something like "Saddam Ibn-Muhammad Ibn-Mahmud al-Tikriti"--Saddam, the son of Muhammad, the son of Mahmud, from the city (or country, or tribe, or clan, etc.) of Tikrit". There is no "last name" in the western sense.

"Saddam Hussein", however, IS a first and last name in the western style of a first name followed by a family name, since this style of naming people eventually penetrated throughout the world.


Er... not exactly, but close. The word "ibn"/"bin" for "son of" is only used in part of the Arab world. In Saudi Arabia, for example. But not in Iraq, Syria or Lebanon.

Some more extensive information from an article at ctv.ca (http://www.ctv.ca/servlet/ArticleNews/story/CTVNews/20021120/saddam_hussein_name_021120/):

"Hussein is not his family name. Saddam is his given name, and Hussein is his father's given name; this is common practice in Arab families. His full name is Saddam Hussein al-Majd al-Tikriti, but he uses neither al-Majd, which is akin to a family name, nor al-Tikriti, which is a name for his extended family, or clan, derived from the Tikrit region where the president is from."

Tim Harrison, a professor of Near and Middle Eastern Civilizations at the University of Toronto explains that Arabic names are structured so that their full names offer a sort of genealogy of the family. So, Hussein is not the president's last name; it is the name of his father, Hussein Abdul al Majid al Tikriti. The Iraqi leader's son is likewise named after him: Odai Saddam Hussein.

The issue is further complicated by Saddam's regime outlawing the use of family names in the late '80s. Essentially Iraq has gone back to the older single-name tradition.

[Skeptic]

Er... not exactly, but close.

Now STOP partonizing me!

:)

The word "ibn"/"bin" for "son of" is only used in part of the Arab world. In Saudi Arabia, for example. But not in Iraq, Syria or Lebanon.

Apparently so, didn't know that...

As for the the "family name" being the clan (or tribe) name, and not the name of the city, etc., you are correct, I mis-spoke. The last part of the name--"al Tikriti", from Tikrit (literally, "the Tikritian") is a bit like an "official" nickname of the person that usually comes after the name of father, grandfather, and clan.

This "nickname" sometimes signifies a georgraphical place of origin, but not necessarily. It could also signify a physical feature ("al-halil", the handsome, for example), or even a theological one, such as "al-habib" ("the loved [by God]"), etc.