Hirsch, Solomon Zalman, Judah or Aryeh Löb, Binyamin Wolf, and these again gave currency to similar correlative names, as Uri Phoebus. Titular abbreviations It was during the Middle Ages that the somewhat curious custom arose of combining the abbreviation of a title with the initials of a name to form a single personal name. This almost invariably implies frequency of mention, and, therefore, celebrity. The best-known examples are those of RaSHI and RaMBaM, who are hardly ever quoted in rabbinical texts except by these names, but there are many similar contractions. A somewhat similar use of a title is the combination with Messer, as in the Italian Messer Leon, while in Provence the honorary prefixes en-, for men, and na-, for women, are combined with the name to form Engusek (En-Joseph), Nabona, etc. Apart from these tendencies, the general trend of nomenclature among Jews in the Middle Ages was to adopt that of the countries in which they lived, the given names being often identical with those of the surrounding peoples, and other means of identification being derived mainly from localities or offices. Certain peculiarities of various countries may be taken separately. Mizrahim Among the Mizrahim (Arabic-speaking Jews living in Western Asia and North Africa) it was quite common to replace their Hebrew names with relevant Arabic ones, whenever they bore a religious note and were deemed sacred to both Jews and Muslims, so Abraham turned into Ibrahim, Aharon into Haroun, David into Daoud, Moshe into Moussa, and Shlomo into Soliman or Salman. The indication of a family's elevated religious status, which also gained its members the reverence of their non-Jewish neighbors, was expressed in Arabic through their name. One has to note that such names were often given by the surrounding non-Jewish communities, who confused the appropriate religious terms of the Halakhah. An example of this is the name Nader, which is the Arabic translation of Nazir: the Hebrew root word neizer (pronounced nay-zeer) means delineation or designation, and refers to the status of nezirut in which a person makes a vow to isolate himself from certain matters, such as intoxicating beverages, and other material luxuries (the absence of which would deaden his cravings for physical pleasures, as well as enhance his spiritual sensitivity and further his quest to attain spiritual heightenings), as well as things that are considered being tamea (spiritually unclean, such as corpses). Yet in the