Talk:Arab

I'm not sure whether to redlink 'Arabia' or 'Arabian Peninsula'. Ro Thorpe 04:59, 15 January 2008 (CST)

Arab people a better title? John Stephenson 11:59, 28 January 2011 (UTC)

Maybe. Or possibly Arabic people. There are a lot of ethnic names (like "Kurd" or "Mongol" or "Sami" or "Inuit"), names for nationalities (like "America" or "Mexican" or "Greek" or "Russian"), religious names ("Hindu" or "Catholic" or "Muslim") that are used as both adjectives and nouns. My sense is that using such names as nouns is sometimes taken to be offensive. That's not always the case, though, as should be obvious from my lists. "Arab" is used a lot in the U.S. news, but I don't know enough if there are any connotations associated with the term for the people to whom it is applied. Unless there are such connotations, this is probably going to be an issue of standardization for the social science workgroups. --Joe Quick 15:30, 28 January 2011 (UTC)

As far as the geographic area, an al-Qaeda "franchise" is usually called "al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula." Don't know if I want to use A-Q as a reference, though. "Arabia", though, is too easy to confuse with "Saudi Arabia". Howard C. Berkowitz 17:30, 28 January 2011 (UTC)

Okay, but that doesn't really address the issue. "Arabia" is clearly a noun. The question here is whether "Arab" is better used as a noun or an adjective. --Joe Quick 00:44, 30 January 2011 (UTC)

The use of 'Arab' as an adjective is restricted to meanings close to that of a person: an Arab woman, perhaps an Arab country, but probably not an Arab landscape or mountain or house. Joe says: '"Arab" is used a lot in the U.S. news' - in the plural as a noun, or as an adjective, I'd guess. 'Arabic' is even more restricted, to the language, so Arabian people, not Arabic people. And there is the complication that Arabian is not a nationality, though Saudi Arabian is, technically - though we normally say Saudi... Ro Thorpe 01:29, 30 January 2011 (UTC)