Arabic2 syllablesProphet's household
Meaning: one who divides or distributes; a sharer-out of portions.
Qasim
Qasim means the one who divides, from the root that gives qisma, an allotted share — the word that reached English, by way of Turkish, as kismet.
| Origin | Arabic — qāsim, active participle of qasama (root q-s-m), to divide or apportion |
|---|---|
| Meaning | One who divides, one who distributes shares; the same root gives qism, a section or department, and qisma, an allotted portion |
| Pronunciation | KAH-sim; the initial q is a deep k made far back in the throat in Arabic, and a plain k everywhere else |
| Popularity | Outside the current U.S. top 100 and rare in America; common in Pakistan and the Gulf, and standard in Turkey as Kasım |
| Variants | Kasim, Qassim, Kassim, Cassim; Turkish Kasım, Persian and Urdu Qasim |
| Nicknames | Kas or Cas in English-speaking use; not usually clipped in Arabic |
| Kunya | Abu al-Qasim, father of Qasim, is the kunya of the Prophet Muhammad |
History & meaning
Q-s-m is the root of dividing, and its products are everywhere in modern Arabic: a university department is a qism, a share or lot is a qisma. That last word travelled into Ottoman Turkish as kısmet, fate understood as the portion allotted to you, and from there into English as kismet. Turkish also kept the plain participle and made a month of it: Kasım is the Turkish name for November, the point at which the old rural calendar divided the year into its summer and winter halves.
The name's standing comes from the Prophet's household. Qasim ibn Muhammad was his first child by Khadijah and died in infancy, and from that son the Prophet took his kunya. A classical Arabic name is built in parts — the given name, then the kunya, Abu plus the eldest son's name, then the lineage, then a nisba of place or tribe — and the kunya is the respectful, affectionate way to address a man. So the Prophet is Abu al-Qasim. A hadith in Bukhari instructs Muslims to name their children with his name but not to take his kunya, and jurists have long differed over whether that restriction applied only during his lifetime; what has never been in question is the given name itself, which has been used freely in every century since. Later bearers include Abu al-Qasim al-Zahrawi, the Andalusian surgeon Latin Europe called Albucasis, whose Kitab al-Tasrif was a standard medical text there for five hundred years, and Muhammad ibn Qasim, who led the conquest of Sindh in 711 and is commemorated in Pakistan by Port Qasim.
Why parents choose it
The consonants do the work: a hard opening and a clean close, with none of the softness that Arabic names often carry into English. It is common enough to be unremarkable in Karachi or Doha and genuinely striking in London or Chicago.
Middle names for Qasim
Pair the hard q with something that opens up: Qasim Ali, Qasim Yusuf, Qasim Hamza, Qasim Nasir. See the middle names guide for the general principle of alternating hard and soft.
Famous Qasims
Qasim Amin, the Egyptian jurist whose 1899 book The Liberation of Women opened the modern Arab debate on the subject, is the best known bearer of the bare name. Abu al-Qasim al-Zahrawi wrote the surgical encyclopaedia that taught European doctors for centuries, and Abu al-Qasim Ferdowsi, author of the Shahnameh, carried the same kunya in Persian.
Consider instead
Hasan also belongs to the Prophet's family and is far commoner. Tariq shares the hard consonantal shape and points at the morning star. Faris, a horseman or knight, has the same two-beat rhythm with a more secular feel.