Should a family name after a بن chain stay out of the patronymic? (خالد بن سعد القحطاني gives patronymic 'بن سعد القحطاني') #1155

parse("خالد بن سعد القحطاني") gives given 'خالد', family 'بن سعد القحطاني', patronymic 'بن سعد القحطاني'. In a Gulf name, the word after the chain is the family or tribal name (al-Qahtani), not part of the father's name. So the patronymic view should be 'بن سعد'.

A name with two links splits them across fields:

• عبدالله بن يوسف بن ناصر الحربي gives middle 'بن يوسف', family 'بن ناصر الحربي', patronymic 'بن يوسف بن ناصر الحربي'
• the Latin spelling behaves the same way: Khalid bin Saad Alqahtani gives patronymic 'bin Saad Alqahtani'

Measured 2026-11-07:

• King Saud University faculty directory (every 10th page; 401 names written in Arabic script only): 169 hold بن/بنت/ابن after the first word. 162 of them have two or more words after the last particle, and in 148 of those 162 the last word starts with ال, آل or با.
• JRC-Names (Arabic-script spellings): 1,185 hold a chain. 487 have two or more words after the last particle, and in 336 of those 487 the last word starts with ال, آل or با. 653 have exactly one word after it, the short form news text uses (محمد بن سلمان).

Why it reads this way: rules/R9 (the patronymic view) was written on Malay names. There, bin + the father's name ends the name, and the father's name may be two words (Ahmad bin Abdul Rahman). Gulf names add a family name after the chain. In Latin script the two shapes can't be told apart: bin Abdul Rahman (a two-word father's name) and bin Saad Alqahtani (father plus family) are both "bin + two words". In Arabic script they can be: rules/P12 already lists the words that complete عبد, so بن عبد الرحمن is one father's name. And a final word starting with ال after a one-word father's name is usually a family name.

Questions:

• Fields: should خالد بن سعد القحطاني read family 'القحطاني', with 'بن سعد' as a middle name? Or should the family keep the chain (as it does today) and only the view change?
• The view: should it stop before a trailing word that isn't part of a father's name? And in Arabic script only, the way P12 decided for abdul?
• Two links: should بن يوسف بن ناصر stay in one field, rather than split between middle and family?
• Is a family-name test on the last word's ال/آل/با prefix allowed, or is it the "statistical guess wearing a script's clothes" that decisions/P12 refused for عبد? If refused, what closed signal is left?