Biblical Hebrew Forum

[Peter Kirk <peter AT qaya.org>]

On 24/05/2006 08:16, Herman Meester wrote:
> 2006/5/24, Gene Gardner <g_gardner1234 AT yahoo.com>:
>   
> > Could anyone on the list give me a linguistic breakdown of the name
> > Qumran?
> >
> >     
>
> Fully it's Khirbet Qumrān, Arabic, naturally. Khariba, or Khirba خربة, is
> "ruin(s)" (cf. Hebrew charev, חרב). Qumrān قمران seems to have a dualis -ān
> ending. So we have "Ruin of 2 QMRs". Qamar, then, commonly means "moon",
> also in the sense "satellite", so "big light, other than stars, in the sky".
> Al-qamarān, meaning, "the 2 moons", is used for "sun and moon". Qumrān or
> qamarān are virtually the same, because short vowels and the way they are
> put in the consonant structure differ regionally.
> So does Khirbet Qumrān mean: "The ruin of Sun and Moon" or "the Ruin of the
> Two Moons"?
> I have no idea. The best thing to do would be to consult a scientific
> etymology of Levantine place names. Their writers may have just gone to the
> place and asked "old and wise" people around what the name really means.
>
> (Btw., there is another meaning for the root QMR, or a different root QMR,
> that has to do with "gambling".)
>   

Could there be a link with Hebrew KOMER, Aramaic KUMRA' "priest"? If so, 
the name could be a memory that this was once a religious community. The 
change from kaph to qoph could be explained by the phonetic environment 
before a back vowel.

--
Peter Kirk
peter AT qaya.org (personal)
peterkirk AT qaya.org (work)
http://www.qaya.org/