Can you tell the gender of a person from their Arabic name?

I'm replying to a prospective student visitor to DSTC, which in the first person is uncomplicated by the gender of the student.... however, when discussing her/him with colleagues, their gender is useful to know so that we can use a single pronoun.

I suspected that an "El" at the begining of the name might give away their gender, so I went looking for confirmation...

After a few google searches failed I found the following fascinating and detailed explanation. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arabic_name Now I know that the "El" (could also be "Al" in a different transliteration) means "of", and in particular in this context it prefixes the family name... Also, it explains "bin", or "ben", as in Osama bin Laden... which is "son of". But there's much more... take a look.