God teaches Adam the names

Sha'rawi holds that God taught Adam all the names, that divine teaching comes as an inspiration cast into the heart, and that the things named existed before the angels knew them ^{1 2}. The verse on this teaching is al-Baqara 31.

He notes that the word "all" means comprehensive knowledge of these names ¹. Asked about names for inventions that would come later, he answers that God gave Adam what the needs of existence require, and that later names are formed from the language that reached him ^{1 3}.

He holds that language is not heredity, lineage or environment, but imitation of what a person hears and then speaks. A deaf person cannot speak a single letter, so if Adam spoke the names, he had heard them from God ². He gives the example of an Arab child raised in London who speaks English, and the reverse ².

He holds that the variety of languages arose from humanity spreading over the earth, that each language derives from an older one, and that the differences among Arabic dialects come from periods of historical weakness in which regions were cut off from one another ³.

This is Sha'rawi's reading. No linguistic theory of the origin of language and no positions of other theological schools on tawqif and iṣṭilāḥ are set out here, and none is checked.