Why Named? A Socio-cultural and Translational View of Proper Names in Jordan
Prof. Majed Al-Quran, Dr. Bakri Al-Azzam

Abstract
Names are cultural words referring to elements deeply rooted in the culture of a given speech community. In Arabic, as the case might be so in other languages, quite many proper names are richly loaded with cultural connotations, historical events, culture-specific metaphors and some other types of allusions. Naming could be looked at as an act of labeling persons or places whereby some meanings or concepts are poured into a linguistic form permissible by the phonological, morphological as well as the semantic rules of a given language system. The present paper is investigating the multifarious social and cultural allusions loaded in a sample of Arabic names, though with special reference to the Jordanian setting. The analysis further displays the social, psychological and cultural motives behind opting for certain names that are related to climatic, religious, political and romance backgrounds.

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