Biblical Hebrew Forum

["Herman Meester" <crazymulgogi AT gmail.com>]

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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