NOT FOR SALE The Meaning of Names in Hadramaut Mary Ann Walter Massachusetts Institute of Technology Personal names in Wadi Hadramaut 1 differ in several interesting ways from names used elsewhere in the Arab world. For obvious sociohistorical reasons, most of the recorded names are those of male members of the sayyid class, and those names tend to be mainstream Muslim ones. The Hadrami sayyids descend from 80 families that fled Iraq in the 9 th century to settle in the wadi, and became an institutionalized religious elite. Personal contact with a wider social spectrum and careful examination of written sources, however, bring to light more names from the native tradition, and their properties. In this study I focus primarily on one aspect of them – that is, given names of girls that reflect and affirm their families’ international ties. But all are worthy of mention, and similarly revealing about the region. 1 The area under discussion is located in the (eponymous) governorate in Hadramaut, in the eastern part of the Republic of Yemen. I limit my attention to the section of the wadi between the two cities of Shibam and Tarim, disregarding outliers, the stony plateaus which abut the wadi, and the coastal region of the governorate.