About

Muhammad Sumbul is the name of a kitten appearing in a viral Arabic video, where he is named alongside his six littermates. Muhammad Sumbul began to appear in memes due to the strangeness of the names mentioned in the video and reached a peak in popularity in the summer of 2022.

Origin

On July 19th, 2022 Facebook^[1] user Youssef A Said posted a video of a man showing his six new kittens to the camera. This video is an edited repost of one from another user who remains unknown, in which the background audio has been added in. The audio is synced to name the six kittens one by one as they are shown to the camera. All of them have very formal sounding names. The last one mentioned is named Muhammad Sumbul which became the most memorable name based on the video, though other names were still mentioned in memes. This video received more than 7,900 reactions and 10,000 shares in two months (shown below).

- Yaqub Qomarudin Dibizah
- Khalid Kashmiri
- Khidir Karawitah
- Ismail Ahmad Khan Nabawi
- Utsman Abdul Jalil Shisha
- Muhammad Sumbul

On July 27th, 2022, after Muhammad Sumbul gained attention online, YouTube^[2] user مكتبة الميمز/memes library reposted a video of a man saying what appears to be the same audio with a list of names. It is unknown where and when the video originated, but it seems to prove Muhammad Sumbul's name was taken from a separate video created by the unknown man seen here. It received more than 378,000 views in two months (shown below).

Spread

In July 2022, the video gained popularity among speakers of Arabic. For example on July 31st, 2022, YouTube^[3] user BIMO uploaded his reaction video of funny videos, one of them is Youssef A Said's. The video received more than 433,000 views in one month (shown below, left, skip to 2:50). On August 7th, 2022, YouTube^[4] user Barhom m3arawi – برهوم معراوي uploaded video that explain the meaning of the names. The video received more than 791,000 views in one month (shown below, right).

On July 26th, 2022, Facebook^[5] user Lamine Slord uploaded a meme about personality types being compared to the cats in the video. The post received 372 reactions and 965 shares (shown below, left). On September 12th, 2022, Facebook^[6] user Ridzwan Irawan uploaded a meme about stereotypical names from different countries. The post received more than 3,000 reactions and 3,500 shares (shown below, right).

Various Examples

Search Interest

External References