What about regular declensions of 'ax' and 'ab'
- 'axykha' 'axyv' etc, or 'avykha' 'avyw' etc.
Note the letter "Yud" is preserved throughout the
declension, and is also retained in the consruct,
e.g. 'axy-hamelekh' or 'avy-hayeled'.
Clearly this points an early PS vowel following
the two consonants of these nouns. Cf. with 'abw'
(abu) in Arabic.
However, this ancient vowel was not preserved in
all names of this type, e.g. 'Axav', 'avram'.
For a different comparison look at the Heb. noun
')em' (mother) in declension - no 'yud' there.
Uri Hurwitz
Yigal Levin
On Behalf Of Nir cohen -
Subject: [b-hebrew] xiram
...the middle Y in many semitic names, when used to fuse together two separate
words, such as AX-Y-RM etc, should be interpreted firstly as a phonetic
process, and only secondly as a grammatical process...