El Moussa Ethnicity: What Kind Of Name Is ‘Flip Or Flop’ Stars Tarek and Christina’s Surname?

What is Tarek El Moussa’s ethnicity? With the Flip or Flop stars dominating celebrity news headlines over the past few weeks, some observers are wondering where the surname “El Moussa” comes from. TheInquisitr is here to help. As you’ll see, Tarek and Christina haven’t been particularly open about their ethnicity, and nailing down name origins is an inexact science.

The most important thing to note when nailing down Tarek and Christina El Moussa’s ethnicity is this: they were both born and raised in Southern California, according to HGTV. So in the strictest sense, both of their ethnicities are American.

Of course, that’s not the question being asked here. What readers really want to know is, what ethnicity is the name “El Moussa”? That’s going to be hard to pin down, for a variety of reasons.

For what it’s worth, according to Answers.com, Tarek El Moussa is Moroccan, and El Moussa is a Moroccan name. However, it’s not clear who wrote that or where they got their information. Further, Answers.com, not unlike Wikipedia, is essentially an information free-for-all and anyone can say just about anything.

Lacking clear answers, we turn to the name “Tarek El Moussa” itself. According to baby-name website Behind The Name, Tarek, along with its cognates Tariq and Tarik, is a boy’s name in Arabic. Similarly, the word transliterated “El” is a definite article in Arabic, kind of like “the” in English. And “Moussa” is also an Arabic word — specifically, the Arabic version of the name Moses, according to Google Translate. As in, the Moses of the Bible.

So it appears as if “Tarek El Moussa” is an Arabic name, roughly meaning “Tarek Moses.”

Still, known that the name is Arabic doesn’t necessarily nail down Tarek El Moussa’s ancestry with any certainty. Arabic is spoken all across parts of the Middle East, North Africa, and points elsewhere.

Similarly, Christina El Moussa doesn’t appear to be interested in talking about her maiden name, and until her marriage or divorce records from her marriage to Tarek are made public, it appears that information will be kept secret.

In other words, it looks like, until he or she publicly says otherwise, Flip or Flop viewers will just have to accept the fact that Tarek and Christina El Moussa are American, and leave it at that.

Despite the fact that their marriage is over, and the fact that they’ve become tabloid fodder, at one time Tarek and Christina El Moussa were an American success story. Through sheer grit and determination, the couple overcame adversity to make lemonade out of lemons, but to become beloved reality television stars in the process.

According to their HGTV biography, Tarek and Christina were both real estate agents working the lucrative Southern California market when they met, making money hand over fist. However, that all changed in 2008 when the real estate bubble burst. According to one rumor, they went from living in a $6,000-per-month house to a $700-per-month apartment.

Needing a way to keep the bills paid, the couple began “flipping” homes: buying distressed, foreclosed, and short-sale properties on the cheap, fixing them up, and selling them at a profit. According to their HGTV biography, the couple do most of the design and renovation work themselves to keep costs down; however, an April 2015 Circa Design report posits that paid contractors do most of the work, and that HGTV perhaps overstates how much of the work is Tarek and Christina’s.

New episodes of Flip or Flop, starring Tarek and Christina El Moussa, air Thursday nights at 9:00 p.m. Eastern time on HGTV.

[Featured Image by Jerod Harris/Getty Images for Lakewood Center]