Elif

Elif Batuman, The Possessed:

Among the not very numerous theoretical texts I read as a literature major, one that made an especially strong impression on me was Foucault’s short essay on Don Quixote in The Order of Things, the one that likens the tall, skinny, weird-looking hidalgo to “a sign, a long, thin graphism, a letter that has just escaped from the open pages of a book.” I immediately identified with this description because elif, the Turkish word for alif or aleph—the first letter of the Arabic and Hebrew alphabets—is drawn as a straight line. My parents chose this name for me because I was an unusually long and skinny baby (I was born one month early).

Ead.,  “Stage Mothers”:

 A few years ago, a reporter asked Ümmiye if she knew the meaning of her name. She didn’t, and wasn’t pleased to learn that ümmi is Arabic for “illiterate.” (It’s one of the epithets of Muhammad, who is said to have been illiterate at the time he received the prophecies.) Üm is also the Arabic word for “mother,” and thus the two preoccupations of Ümmiye’s dramatic work—education and motherhood—are prefigured in her name. 

[...]

“Wool Doll,” the movie that Ümmiye finished shooting in the spring, is set among the Yörük, some thirty years ago. It tells the story of a mother and daughter, Hatice and Elif, who lead a life of oppression at the hands of Hatice’s mother-in-law. (Many of the daughters in Ümmiye’s plays are called Elif, which is the Turkish word for the first letter of the Arabic alphabet: to say that someone “doesn’t know elif” is to say that the person is illiterate.)