Hajji (Arabic: ??????? al-?aggi, pilgrim) is an honorific title given to a Muslim person who has successfully completed the Hajj to Mecca, and is often used to refer to an elder, since it takes time to accumulate the wealth to fund the travel. The title is placed before a person's name. In some areas, the title has been handed down the generations, and has become a family name. Such usage can be seen, for example, in the Bosniak surname Hadžiosmanovic, which originally meant son of Hajji Osman. In Christian countries formerly under the rule of the Islamic Ottoman Empire in the Balkans, the title was also sometimes used by Christians despite the initial explicit reference to Islam. In the case of Eastern Orthodox Christians, a pilgrimage to Jerusalem and the Holy Sepulchre is almost always meant. The title is rendered as ????? (hadzhi) in Bulgarian Cyrillic, and ???? (hadži) in Serbian and Macedonian Cyrillic. In Greek — as the first part in a Greek family name — it is spelled ?at?? (khadzi). It can often be found in family names, whether written together, hyphenated or separate, of people who descend from pilgrims from the times of the Ottoman Empire.
From March 2003 onwards, just before the invasion of Iraq, the term Hajji has been documented among U.S. military personnel as a reference to all things "civilian" in the Middle East. The term has gained some minor use beyond the military also. So used, the term is often collective in sense, describing a community of Muslims or Middle-Eastern people, vehicles used by civilians in the Middle East, civilian dwellings, and civilian authority figures, rather than directed towards a particular individual. However, some claim that the word used by U.S. military personnel refers instead to "Hadji", after the Johnny Quest character, and not related to either the Muslim title or pilgrimige.
Some consider the word an ethnic slur directed at Muslims and Middle-Eastern people in general.
