Evidence record · given name

Meaning and use are separate questions.

Lexical evidence: Platts explicitly records ʻabduʼl-lāh as servant of God and a proper name within the ʻabd entry.

Documented use: Abdullah Hussein is credited in a book record; Sheikh Mohammad Abdullah appears in a contemporary parliamentary directory.

A compound actually present in the source

Platts’s dictionary records ʻabduʼl-lāh within its entry for ʻabd and explicitly identifies the compound as a proper name meaning servant of God. The surrounding entry discusses service and worship. Unlike a translation assembled from separate modern name lists, this compound explanation is present in the inspected lexical source itself.[1]

The dictionary’s transcribed form marks sounds and word connections differently from the ordinary English spelling Abdullah. That scholarly notation should be kept distinct from a bearer’s institutional spelling. The source supports a lexical meaning; it does not tell us what any individual’s parents intended or how the bearer personally understands the name.[1]

Abdullah in a literary credit

The public record for Harper Perennial India’s 2016 edition of The Weary Generations credits Abdullah Hussein as author. Its bibliographic table also places Abdullah Hussein in the Translated by field. This establishes a particular presentation of the full literary name and separate credits within that edition’s published metadata, rather than evidence from an unseen page of the novel.[2]

The public author note also associates Hussein with other fiction, including Emigre Journeys. Those titles help identify the writer when searching for Abdullah in literary records. The description does not justify replacing the full author name with a supposed universal expansion of Abdullah or assigning the book’s fictional experiences to its author.[2]

A different position in a directory heading

The 1950 Who’s Who of India’s Provisional Parliament places a different person under Abdullah, Sheikh Mohammad in its alphabetic sequence. Its educational record includes Islamia College in Lahore. This is a documented Punjab educational connection, but the directory’s reversed filing order should not be mistaken for the everyday order of the complete name.[3]

Read beside the literary credit, the heading shows why Abdullah should be retained with its surrounding name and documentary context. Neither record establishes that the two bearers are related or explains their original naming decisions.[3]

Sources & notes

Source records include access dates and, where known, limits on what was examined. Checks used AI assistance; independent human or specialist review has not been completed.

  1. John Thompson Platts. A Dictionary of Urdū, Classical Hindī, and English: ʻabd; ʻabduʼl-lāh ↗original historical dictionary entry · Source date: 1884 work; consulted Sampson Low impression undated · Locator: Printed 758; scan part 2, PDF 154; ʻabd; ʻabduʼl-lāh. Accessed 2026-11-02.Selected printed entry and relevant original corrections inspected. First-edition text; consulted impression is undated. Modern search interfaces and personal naming intentions are outside this lexical scope.Return to A compound actually present in the source, paragraph 1 ↑Return to A compound actually present in the source, paragraph 2 ↑
  2. Harper Perennial India; public metadata and publisher description hosted by Google Books. The Weary Generations: Abdullah Hussein, 2016 edition ↗publisher-supplied bibliographic and author record · Source date: 2016 · Locator: Title, author, bibliographic Author and Translated by fields, publisher/year/ISBN and public About the author section; book text not inspected. Accessed 2026-11-01.The specified passage was actually inspected; the evidence is used only for the claims identified in this entry.Return to Abdullah in a literary credit, paragraph 1 ↑Return to Abdullah in a literary credit, paragraph 2 ↑
  3. Parliament of India; Parliamentary Digital Library. Who’s Who: Provisional Parliament — Abdullah, Sheikh Mohammad ↗contemporary parliamentary directory · Source date: 1950 · Locator: Printed page1, alphabetic heading “ABDULLAH, SHEIKH MOHAMMAD” and Lahore education field. Accessed 2026-11-01. No birth-date, political or territorial claims are derived here.Return to A different position in a directory heading, paragraph 1 ↑Return to A different position in a directory heading, paragraph 2 ↑
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Record PH-NAM-0026 · English edition · human review not performed