His name was Abu Nasr Muhammad ibn Muhammad al-Farabi, sometimes with the family surname al-Tarkhani, i.e., the element Tarkhan appears in a nisba. His grandfather was not known among his contemporaries, but a name Awzalagh, in Arabic, suddenly appears later in the writings of Ibn Abi Usaybi'a, and of his great-grandfather in those of Ibn Khallikan.