So, I was playing with Gemini to ask about Arabic name structure, and it came up with this term I had never heard of, so I decided to ask it what it meant. It may not have relevance in personal name matching, but I can see how it might be useful in entity matching:

Nunation (called Tanween in Arabic) is a linguistic term that refers to adding an “n” sound to the end of a word.

It is not written with the letter “N” (Nun). Instead, it is indicated by doubling the accent mark at the end of the word.

1. What does it do?

In standard grammar, it acts like the English word “A” or “An.” It marks a word as indefinite.

• Kitab = Book
• Al-Kitab = The Book (Specific)
• Kitabun = A Book (General / Indefinite)

2. Why is this in the video about names at the end of this response?

This is the key difference between traditional male and female names in Classical Arabic grammar.

• Male names typically take Nunation. Even though they are specific people, male Arabic names (like Muhammad, Zayd, or Khalid) are grammatically treated as “triptotes” (words that accept all case endings).
  • You say: “Muhammadun” (Nominative case).
• Female names are “Diptotes” (Forbidden from Nunation). Female names (like Fatima, Zainab, or Maryam) fall into a grammatical category called Mamnu’ min al-sarf (forbidden from exchanging). They generally cannot take the “n” sound at the end.
  • You say: “Fatima-u” (NOT Fatima-un).

3. Summary

In the context of the video: Nunation is the “Un” sound you hear at the end of male names (Muhammad-un) that is grammatically stripped away from female names (Fatima-u).

Sources

• Council on American-Islamic Relations (cair.com)
• Learn Arabic Online (learnarabiconline.com)
• Transparent Language (blogs.transparent.com)
• Wikipedia (en.wikipedia.org)

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Relevance of Video

The video below provides a linguistic breakdown of the grammatical differences between male and female names in Arabic, specifically focusing on “Tanween” (nunation) and how endings change based on gender, which is useful for understanding the spoken nuances of these names.

Male vs. Female Names (Tanween)

[Ep. 11] Madinah Arabic – “Male vs. Female Names (Tanween)” – YouTube

Saajid Lipham · 1.4K views