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Loan-Words in Semitic Languages Meaning ‘Town’

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 January 2015

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Copyright © Antiquity Publications Ltd 1939

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References

1 British School of Archaeology in Egypt, 12th year, 1906. Hyksos and Israelite Cities, by Flinders Petrie, W.M. pp.1–27.Google Scholar

2 There was also another Carthage, in Cyprus; it is mentioned, as KAR-TI-眢A-DA-ASH-TI in a cuneiform inscription of Assurbanipal; see Oberhummer article ‘Kypros’, Pauly-Wissowa, Realetic., XH, col. 102, line 9. Incidentally the Roman form CARTHAGO for QARTH ADASHÅH proves that the Latin G was pronounced as a palatalised Ğ just as it shows that the Phenicians of the West pronounced the long ä (qämes)—like the modern Ashkenazi å as an or ¯.

3 Keilinschriften aus Boghazkoej, IV, 4; 11, 61; Forrer, E.O. Forschungen, 2 46;Google Scholar Goetze, A. Mitt. d. Vorderasiat. Ges. 1936, 34, 2, p.66; quoting Keilinschriften aus Boghaxkoej v, 6; III, 33.Google Scholar

4 Charles, Autran, Introduction à l’étude critique du nom propre Grec, (Paris Geuthner), pp.204, 464.Google Scholar

5 See below p. 452, note 15 on KERK-OBA in Arcadia, CRAC-OW in Poland and p. 454 on the meaning of the -OVA ending.

6 This refers to the so-called ‘fluchtburg’ or refuge-camps, as they were formerly regarded ; it is now known that they were simply villages, permanently inhabited, surrounded by a protecting wall See Schrader, Nehring, Reallexikon der Indogermanischen Altertumskunde, 2nd edn., 11 (Berlin 1929) 434, plates 98 if.Google Scholar

7 GENESIS, IO, 14=1 CHRONICLES, I, 12. Transpose: ‘and Pathrusim and Casluhim and Caphtorim, out of whom came PHILISTIM’. CAPHTORIM, cuneiform KA-AP-TA-RA, hieroglyphic KPTR is Crete, the hitherto unidentified enigmatic Kasluḫim are simply‘ waste lands’ (cuneiform KISLAḪ Mitt. d. Vorderas. Ges. 34, 1, 1930, p. 82, line 35).

8 See Haxthausen, , Transcaucasien, 2, 36; Brunnhofer, Arische Urzeit, 14.Google Scholar

9 Described in an early essay by Lawrence, T.E. posthumous edition (Cockerel1 Press 1936).Google Scholar See Boase, T.S.R. Journal of the Warburg Institute 1939, 2, 16, note 2.Google Scholar

10 A list of Egyptian place-names compounded with the element KERKE will be found in Grenfell and Hunt’s Tebtunis Papyrus, I, 383.

11 See Pape-Benseler’s Dict. of Greek Proper Names, and the respective articles in Pauly-Wissowa’s Realenc. d. Klass. Altertums, giving authorities for those placenames here quoted without such.

12 GENESIxS, 16: xv, 21 ; DEUTERONOVMY, VII I, ; JOSHUA III, 10 and XXIV, II; I CHRONICLIE, I, 14.

13 -AMISH, -EMISH might be composed of the well-known -ISH suffix and the widespread baby-language gloss (‘Lallwort’) ‘AM, ‘AMMA, ‘Aμμάς. In Biblical Hebrew ‘EM, ‘mother’ is actually used of a ‘mother’-town. The compound KARK-EM-ISH, GARG-AM-ISH=‘Town maternal’ like CITTÁ MADRE, CITÉ MÈRE and not like our ‘mother-town’. Greek μητρó¶ºλς would be formed like the common place-name ‘Aστν-παλαîλ (instead of πλλιó-πολις)e un-Hellenic, i.e. pre-Hellenic construction of which has long been noticed, e.g. by August Fick in his Hattiden und Danubier and Vorgriechische Ortsnamen. On the face of it GARG-AMISH might be compared to PERG-AM-OS, PERG-AM-ON—PERG being evidently πύργ-ος, BURGH, BROCH, etc.— but PERGAMOS (the son of Neoptolemos) might stand for ∗PERGAMUWAS, PRIAMOS for ∗PRIAMUWAS as PYRAMOS is PURANDA-MUVAS according to E. Forrer.

14 Sir Charles Low compares the Turkish word ORDU, camp, Persian &DO, court, camp, horde of Tartars, whence is derived the term URDU ZABAN, camp language, to describe the Persianized Hindostani (written in Arabo-Persian characters) used by the educated Moslems of India. This is a Zingua jranca which spread from the Moghul ‘camp’ or ‘court’ of Delhi’. The English and German words ‘horde’, describing a savage ‘tribe’ (originally of Mongols or Tartars) are well known, and are generally recognized as loan-words from Turco-Tartar ORDO. Comparison with the Horrite ARTE, city, is all the more legitimate since Dr Emil Forrer is inclined to consider the Horrians as hailing from Central Asia. On the other hand we find at Sparta a goddess ORTH-IA, whose certainly pre-Hellenic name has nothing to do with óρθóς ‘upright’ since there is no evidence that she was ever worshipped in the shape of an upright pillar. She is identified with ART-EMIS, a fact which is easily understandable if both ORTH-IA and ART-EMIS mean ‘she of the city’, Πολιὰς [θεά]=[the goddess] of the city, or ‘ of the Metropolis’ and if in the various dialects of the ‘Horrian’ language an ARTE stood beside an ORTHE, both meaning literally ‘camp, court’. It is remarkable that we find in German —and only in the recent high German—the words ORT, ORTSCHAFT, town, township, which cannot be derived (Kluge’s Etymolagisches WGrterbuch, 9th edition 1921, p. 336) from ancient high German ort, Anglo-Saxon, Old Saxon, Middle-English ord ‘point’ ‘corner’, but must be a Tartar loan-word like Horde. Then there is pasture, grass [land] or grass [plot], grazing: Latin HORTUS, Italian ORTO, garden, alongside with middle Latin CORTIS, CURTIS, Rumanian CURTEAFr,e nch COUR, English COURT, 0. Engl. GEARD, hedged inclosure, English YARD, an inclosed place or forecourt of a building. One wonders, therefore, whether the Horrian ARTE, Turkish ORDȗ Persian ȏRDȗ , Spartan ORTH-IA might not somehow be connected with the Indo-European group GURT-ASH, GORD-ION, QARTH, KERT, GERD. Being nomads like the Semites, thz Turco- Tartars and Mongols might have borrowed the Iranian word ȏRDû

15 E.g. ANK-UWA, ANS-UWA, HASH-UWA, HIND-UWA (obviously connected with the river Indos) in Caria ; ISH-UWA (obviously connected with the river Issus, site of Alex- ander’s famous victory), LULL-UWA, SAPIN-UWA, TUWAN-UWA (=Greek TYANA), UGAB- UWA, ZINZIK-UWA.

16 See e.g. the plan of Sam’al in Northern Syria: Ebert, Reall. d. Vargesch. plate 102.

17 The Greek Διβύη, Libya, is obviously a transcription of a native LIB-UWA to which cp. Lieb-au, Ljep-aja on the Baltic coast. As to the meaning of the suffix - W A , -OWA see p. 454. On the Libyan coast are the Kerk-ennah islands, a name which may well be synonymous with that of the Greek Cyclades (κνλάδες from κύκλος).

18 ASHSHUVAR is the ending of the Luvian infinitive ; the initial I may well be due to the exigencies of the syllabic cuneiform writing, which could not render a verb SHDUM in any other way; or it may be the ‘anaptyctic’ vowel, facilitating the pronunciation of the two consonants following each other; or it may be a case like είς την πɃλιν <Istanbul <Stambul.

19 Cp. Oeland i.e. Reall. d. Vargesch. the ‘island’ on the Swedish coast.

20 This Aryan AP[AM] appears as -AB in DO-AB, land of ‘two-rivers‘, PUNJ-AB, land of ‘ five rivers’; it corresponds to the Latin AQUA, Illyrian AQUILIS, AQUINCUM, and the Teutonic AKHA as the word PIDPID in the unidentified language discovered by Emil Forrer (Die Pidpid-Sprache, Forschungen n) on a cuneiform tablet from Boghazkoej, with the Latin QUICQUID and the Nashili KUISHKUISH (Latin QUISQUíS), or the Latin LUPUS with the Greek λύκος- Similar correlations are well known to exist between the p-languages and the q-languages of the Celtic group.

21 The ‘s’ in ‘island ’ (ME. iland, OE. ig-land) is well-known to be due to a con-fusion with isle, derived from the French isle, Italian isola, Latin insula, the diminutive form of the word ∗ns surviving in Gaelic : YNIS (Welsh), INNIS (Gaedhelic), ENNIS (Irish), INCH (Scottish; cp. for these words Isaac Taylor, Words and Places, 1896, p. 329) and in the Greek νἣσος ν硓σς (whence nash-ili, the language of the Nησιὠται, the Indo-European conquerors entering Asia Minor by way of the ‘islands bridge’, the Indo-European language of the Boghazkoej tablets). The g in Anglo-Saxon IGLAND shows that AVIA is derived from an earlier AGVIA.

22 Popularly derived from the name of a mythic founder of the town, the giant Krak.

23 To these Asianic names ending in -AWA, cp. the modern LIET-UWA, i.e. Lithu-ania

24 The World’s Peoples, 1908, p.324.Google Scholar