The list of banned names, compiled by the Interior Ministry’s civil affairs department, includes names deemed to be of non-Islamic or non-Arabic origin and monikers seen as incompatible with the culture and religion of Saudi Arabia, Gulf News reported Friday.
The list includes several popular western names, such as Linda, Alice, Elaine and Binyamin, the Arabic version of Benjamin.Some of the banned names are words associated with royalty, including Amir, Arabic for “prince;” Malek, or “king;” and Malika, or “queen.”disappearance, which has transfixed the world and left the families of the 239 passengers and crew distraught, enraged and baying for information that authorities have not been able to provide.
These include the notion of a sudden mid-air explosion or a catastrophic equipment or structural failure, or a crash into the South China Sea.
At the same time, it opened a whole new avenue of possible speculation, including an attempted 9/11-style attack, enhancing the twist-and-turn mystery surrounding one of the biggest enigmas in modern aviation history.
Final satellite communication with the Boeing 777 flying from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing came more than six-and-a-half hours after it vanished from civilian radar at 1.30am on March 8, Najib said.
He said investigators had concluded the plane was indeed diverted to the west from its original flight path, and as a result search operations in the South China Sea were being called off.
But the remaining area remained dauntingly large. Najib said the plane could be anywhere from “Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan to northern Thailand, or a southern corridor stretching approximately from Indonesia to the southern Indian Ocean”.
Earlier, a senior Malaysian military official said investigators now believe the plane was commandeered by a “skilled, competent and current pilot,” but stopped short of specifying whether a hijacker or member of the crew was suspected.
“He knew how to avoid the civilian radar. He appears to have studied how to avoid it,” the official said.
As the search for the plane continues, the focus in the gripping saga will shift to who would have diverted the plane and why.
Malaysian security officials were already embarrassed by revelations earlier in the week that two Iranian men had managed to board the plane using stolen European passports.
It could also bring new attention on Captain Zaharie Ahmad Shah, 53, and his First Officer Fariq Abdul Hamid, 27.
An Australian television report broadcast an interview with a young South African woman who alleged Fariq and another pilot colleague invited them into the cockpit of a flight he co-piloted in 2011 – a breach of post-9/11 security rules.
The Boeing 777 vanished over waters between Malaysia and southern Vietnam. The night was clear and no distress signal was received.
Even with attention now firmly on the Indian Ocean, the search parameters pose enormous logistical challenges.
The vast Indian Ocean has an average depth of nearly 3,900 metres and any debris would have been widely dispersed by currents after a week.
“Wind and sea conditions are definitely going to play a very big part if there is wreckage, and if it happens to be in the Indian Ocean. It is an immense area,” said Greg Waldron, Asia managing editor for aviation industry magazine FlightGlobal.
The plane has one of the best safety records of any jet, and the airline also has a solid record.
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