Talk:As-Suwaidi

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It is a problem to sort out the people using this nisba. Afaics, suwayd just means "black, dark", but is in use as an Arab given name in the hadiths, so it has become a standard given name as well.

Now there seem to be lots of places (usually just minor villages or rural toponyms) called "SOMETHING SOMETHING as-Suwaidi" or "SOMETHING SOMETHING as-Suwaid" (this confuses the hell out of the various machine-generated online map and weather tools, which list various places more or less in the middle of nowhere which cannot be substantiated via google maps or otherwise)

In the former case, the place is probably named after somebody called Suwayd, in the latter case it is probably descriptive of something "black" or "dark" characteristic of the place. Now people originating from any such place could presumably use the nisba as-Suwaidi, so it is perfectly unclear which "Suwaid" or "Suwaidi" the Iraqi (born in Baghdad) or Qatari people called "al-Suwaidi" are from.

In addition, Suwayd happens to be the Arabic form of the country name Sweden, but this doesn't really add to the confusion, because nobody is going to be calling themselves as-Suwaydi "the Swede" outside of the kunyas used by Islamic terrorists from Sweden, which should be fairly easy to distinguish from the various nisbas used in the Arab world for origin in some place called Suwayd or Suwaydi. --dab (𒁳) 11:19, 30 May 2015 (UTC)