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  • From: "Herman Meester" <crazymulgogi AT gmail.com>
  • To: b-hebrew AT lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: Re: [b-hebrew] the name Qumran
  • Date: Wed, 24 May 2006 14:02:40 +0200

2006/5/24, 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.


That would be highly unlikely, as Hebrew /k/, to my knowledge, doesn't ever
correspond to /q/ in Arabic. The two actually belong to quite different
phonological domains. Arabic /q/ is almost a guttural; for example, in
Egyptian Arabic it has turned into a glottal stop.
regards
Herman
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