Home History 2. Gendered Naming Practices among Coptic Christians in Sixteenth- Century Cairo. A Preliminary Assessment
Chapter
Licensed
Unlicensed Requires Authentication

2. Gendered Naming Practices among Coptic Christians in Sixteenth- Century Cairo. A Preliminary Assessment

View more publications by Amsterdam University Press
To Publisher Page
Non-Elite Women's Networks Across the Early Modern World
This chapter is in the book Non-Elite Women's Networks Across the Early Modern World
2.Gendered Naming Practices among Coptic Christians in Sixteenth-Century CairoA Preliminary AssessmentShauna HuffakerAbstract: Coptic Christians, living in sixteenth-century Ottoman Egypt, were forced to navigate their participation in Cairo’s majority Muslim community. Legal documents from property deeds and court registers yield onomastic clusters that suggest gendered naming strategies practiced by Coptic families. Men were more likely to have religious names, while women often had names that they shared with Muslim girls. This window into Muslim-Christian daily coexistence makes visible the complexities of Coptic cultural identity and the ways that Copts chose to enact both their community’s distinct identities and their social similarity with their Muslim neighbors. Cairo’s shared naming culture for girls would have circulated its messages primarily among the local, social networks of women.Keywords: Egypt, Ottoman empire, early modern, personal names, identity formation, non-Muslim minorityPersonal names illuminate the lives of otherwise anonymous people lost to history and their connections to each other and the broader society. The Coptic community in early modern Egypt provided one example where, in naming their children, parents strategically responded to tumultuous social and political changes. Those changes accompanied Egypt’s incorporation into the Ottoman empire beginning in 1517. To the distant multicultural Ottoman state, Coptic Christians, the indigenous pre-Islamic population of Cohen, E.S. and M.J. Couling (eds.), Non-Elite Women’s Net works across the Early Modern World. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2023doi 10.5117/9789463725750_ch02
© 2023 Amsterdam University Press, Amsterdam

2.Gendered Naming Practices among Coptic Christians in Sixteenth-Century CairoA Preliminary AssessmentShauna HuffakerAbstract: Coptic Christians, living in sixteenth-century Ottoman Egypt, were forced to navigate their participation in Cairo’s majority Muslim community. Legal documents from property deeds and court registers yield onomastic clusters that suggest gendered naming strategies practiced by Coptic families. Men were more likely to have religious names, while women often had names that they shared with Muslim girls. This window into Muslim-Christian daily coexistence makes visible the complexities of Coptic cultural identity and the ways that Copts chose to enact both their community’s distinct identities and their social similarity with their Muslim neighbors. Cairo’s shared naming culture for girls would have circulated its messages primarily among the local, social networks of women.Keywords: Egypt, Ottoman empire, early modern, personal names, identity formation, non-Muslim minorityPersonal names illuminate the lives of otherwise anonymous people lost to history and their connections to each other and the broader society. The Coptic community in early modern Egypt provided one example where, in naming their children, parents strategically responded to tumultuous social and political changes. Those changes accompanied Egypt’s incorporation into the Ottoman empire beginning in 1517. To the distant multicultural Ottoman state, Coptic Christians, the indigenous pre-Islamic population of Cohen, E.S. and M.J. Couling (eds.), Non-Elite Women’s Net works across the Early Modern World. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2023doi 10.5117/9789463725750_ch02
© 2023 Amsterdam University Press, Amsterdam

Chapters in this book

  1. Frontmatter 1
  2. Table of Contents 5
  3. List of Illustrations 7
  4. Introduction 9
  5. Part I Mediterranean Crossings
  6. 1. Going Beyond Montagu. The Network of Subaltern Women in the Turkish Embassy, 1716–1718 25
  7. 2. Gendered Naming Practices among Coptic Christians in Sixteenth- Century Cairo. A Preliminary Assessment 47
  8. 3. The “Queen of Algiers” An Enterprising Renegade in the Rome of Pope Sixtus V 61
  9. 4. An Exotic Migrant , Despina Basaraba Networks a New Life in Papal Rome circa 1600 83
  10. Part II Local Networks in Europe
  11. 5. Domestic Violence and Networks of Female Support in Seventeenth- Century England 119
  12. 6. The Place-Based Networks of Sex Workers in Sixteenth-Century Venice 139
  13. 7. Making a Name in Music. Professional and Social Strategies of the Musicians at the Venetian Ospedali Maggiori 165
  14. 8. Food and Drink Make Relationships. Female Alliances and Commensality in Celestina and La Lozana andaluza 187
  15. Part III Body and Spirit in Colonial Spanish America
  16. 9. “Wall Neighbors,” Mothers-in-Law, and Comadres. Spousal Violence and Networks of Plebeian Female Intimacy and Solidarity in Urban Neighborhoods of Early to Mid-Colonial New Spain (1550–1670) 207
  17. 10. Far from the Margins. Non-elite Single Women and Spiritual Networking in Colonial Guatemala 231
  18. Supplementary Bibliography of Secondary Works 251
  19. Index 255
Readers are also interested in:
https://doi.org/10.1515/9789048553754-004

Chapters in this book

  1. Frontmatter 1
  2. Table of Contents 5
  3. List of Illustrations 7
  4. Introduction 9
  5. Part I Mediterranean Crossings
  6. 1. Going Beyond Montagu. The Network of Subaltern Women in the Turkish Embassy, 1716–1718 25
  7. 2. Gendered Naming Practices among Coptic Christians in Sixteenth- Century Cairo. A Preliminary Assessment 47
  8. 3. The “Queen of Algiers” An Enterprising Renegade in the Rome of Pope Sixtus V 61
  9. 4. An Exotic Migrant , Despina Basaraba Networks a New Life in Papal Rome circa 1600 83
  10. Part II Local Networks in Europe
  11. 5. Domestic Violence and Networks of Female Support in Seventeenth- Century England 119
  12. 6. The Place-Based Networks of Sex Workers in Sixteenth-Century Venice 139
  13. 7. Making a Name in Music. Professional and Social Strategies of the Musicians at the Venetian Ospedali Maggiori 165
  14. 8. Food and Drink Make Relationships. Female Alliances and Commensality in Celestina and La Lozana andaluza 187
  15. Part III Body and Spirit in Colonial Spanish America
  16. 9. “Wall Neighbors,” Mothers-in-Law, and Comadres. Spousal Violence and Networks of Plebeian Female Intimacy and Solidarity in Urban Neighborhoods of Early to Mid-Colonial New Spain (1550–1670) 207
  17. 10. Far from the Margins. Non-elite Single Women and Spiritual Networking in Colonial Guatemala 231
  18. Supplementary Bibliography of Secondary Works 251
  19. Index 255
Sign up now to receive a 20% welcome discount
Institutional Access
How does access work?
Have an idea on how to improve our website?
Please write us.
© 2025 De Gruyter Brill
Downloaded on 18.9.2025 from https://www.degruyterbrill.com/document/doi/10.1515/9789048553754-004/html?licenseType=restricted&srsltid=AfmBOopn-LvQzKFTbfnITi2CByTfFwCLQxBcvw6TA-9id3RUnfWa-vlj
Scroll to top button