I've never seen the transliteration "Aal," so I would assume that the
"Al-" prefix is fairly standard in the Kingdom at least.  While my
students were always quite willing to alter the spelling
[transliteration] of their names if they thought I was not giving their
names the right pronunciation, the "Aal" never cropped up at all and the
"Al-" was usually connected with hyphen, though I have met a few Saudis
here in the US who preferred to write it as a separate word.  I did know
several people whose last name was fairly mundane: Toffaha (Apple), for
example.  And then there were many who named themselves first name
followed by father's first name followed by grandfather's first name
without any indication of clan or family. And I don't pretend at all to
have a handle on the "caste" system that also characterizes Saudi
society, although I had evidence that one Saudi friend was barred from
marrying a certain woman because she was in a clan that was not
accessible to him.

So, you may well be right: Not having studied the subject exhaustively,
I simply relied on my experiences.

==Best, Reinhold

Johnstone wrote:
>
> Hello Reinhold,
>
> Wednesday, September 19, 2001, 6:33:36 PM, you wrote:
>
> RS> Al-Saud is the clan name of the ruling family.
>
> The fastidious spell this "Aal Saud", not "Al-Saud". While the
> distinction is clear in the Arabic spelling, it is easily lost in
> English transliteration. The first, "Aal", is used to designate people
> who share a common ancestor, in this case, a man named Saud. Bedouin
> Arabs do not have surnames but have since the remote past, identified
> themselves by referring to a prominent ancestor. The progeny of the
> late King Faisal, while being members of the Aal Saud, often refer to
> themselves as Aal Faisal.
>
> "Aal" should not be confused with "al-" which is merely the definite
> article, a common component in quite a few Arabic personal names,
> usually male.
>
> The Aal Saud dynasty is named for a remote ancestor Muhammad ibn Saud,
> founder of the first Saudi state, who died in the late 18th century,
> and not for King Abdul Aziz ibn Saud, the father of the present king.
>
> I have never heard Saudis refer to themselves as "Sauds".
>
> Omar
>
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