Why Al-Umawi instead of Umayyad?

[Lister23]

Several versions ago I realised that you had change the name of the Umayyad dinasty to Al-Umawi. Why? All the History books call them Umayyad and, in fact, if I choose one of the historical Umayyad in the game and click to see in Wikipedia, the article of that character says clearly Umayyad dinasty. For example, Abd al-Rahman I. I see that one of his names is "ibn Mu'awiya", similar to the one used in the mod. But "ibn" means "son of", "son of Mu'awiya", it is not a name of a dinasty. Why, then, did you change the dinasty's name to Al-Umawi instead of the one well-known Umayyad?

Anyway, what file do I have to change to get Umayyad back? I am using the HIP, but without the sub-mods SWMH and EMF.

(Just to make clear that I am actually not doing double posting: originally I have posted this question in the vanilla forum but afterwards someone has told that it is actually just in the mod, not in the vanilla version.)

 

[Ese Khan]

Simply put: because the suffix "-ad" is not Arabic. The "al-****i" dynasty name form you see in HIP's SWMH and ARKOPack Armoiries modules is called nisba, which basically denotes the person's geographical, tribal, or patrilineal origin. This is how an eminent person would have been referred to as during CK2's time frame. That's why lots of Islamic scholars and geographers are known by this form: al-Idrisi (he was a scion of the Idrisid dynasty which settled in the Maghreb), al-Bakri (he was a descendant of the family named after the ancestor Bakr in southwestern Andalusia), etc.

So al-Umawi is the nisba for someone who is a descendant of Umayya.

Incidentally, page title for one of the Umayyad emirs on English-language Wikipedia has the al-Umawi nisba.

 

[Gwyn ap Nud]

To expand on what Ese Khan wrote, it's part of the larger direction that names be localized in the language of the culture. So just as Germans are named Heinrich and not Henry, Arabs are named Al-Umawi not Umayyads. This is especially notable if you fast-forward in date and get to some of the really bastardized names, like the Almoravids (aka Al-Murabitun) and Almohads (Al-Muwahhidun), but even in easy ones like Abbasids you see the same.

Basically, it's to fix the question "Why do we not anglicize European names when we anglicize non-European names."

 

[Arko]

In addition, excepted the most famous dynasties, all muslim dynasties had a non anglicized name at game's launch. They were anglicized later on for some reason.
We kept and improved original names in H.I.P.