Zaynab bint Khuzaymah (RA) and the name the poor gave her

The story

Long before she ever married the Prophet ﷺ, people in Madinah had already given Zaynab bint Khuzaymah a name of her own: "mother of the poor." Nobody assigned it officially. It was just what people started calling her, because whenever her name came up, someone nearby had usually just received something from her hands.

She came from noble lineage and could have let that status speak for her, the way many around her did. She never did. Married to 'Abdullah ibn Jahsh — a man the Prophet ﷺ once praised for enduring hunger and thirst better than almost anyone — she matched his humility with her own, never once carried away by pride despite marrying so well. When 'Abdullah gave his life, the grief reached the Prophet ﷺ too, almost as much as it reached her.

He proposed to her not long after, in part to ease that very grief, and she accepted. She entered his household carrying both titles at once — mother of the faithful, mother of the poor — and by every account, the two were really only one thing wearing two names.

Eight months later, she fell seriously ill and died — the only wife of the Prophet ﷺ besides Khadeejah to pass away during his lifetime. He prayed for her by name for the rest of his life, carrying the loss the same patient way she'd carried everyone else's.