Name Studies

What's in a name? An exploration of the significance of personal naming of 'mixed' children for parents from different racial, ethnic and faith backgrounds

by Chamion Caballero

Edwards, R. and Caballero, C. (2008) 'What's in a name? An exploration of the signifcance of personal naming of 'mixed' children for parents from different racial, ethnic and faith backgrounds' in The Sociological Review, 56 (8): 39-60.

This article is concerned with how and why parent couples from different racial, ethnic and faith backgrounds choose... more This article is concerned with how and why parent couples from different racial, ethnic and faith backgrounds choose their children’s personal names? The limited literature on the topic of names often focuses on outcomes, using birth name registration data sets, rather than process. In particular, we consider the extent to which the personal names that ‘mixed’ couples give their children represent an individualised taste, or reflect a form of collective affiliation to family, race, ethnicity or faith. We place this discussion in the context of debates about the racial and faith affiliation of ‘mixed’ people, positing various forms of ‘pro’ or ‘post’ collective identity. We draw on in-depth interview data to show that, in the case of ‘mixed’ couple parents, while most wanted names for their children that they liked, they also wanted names that symbolised their children’s heritages. This could involve parents in complicated practices concerning who was involved in naming the children and what those names were. We conclude that, for a full understanding of naming practices and the extent to which these are individualised or affiliative it is important to address process, and that the processes we have identified for ‘mixed’ parents reveal the persistence of collective identity associated with race, ethnicity and faith alongside elements of individualised taste and transcendence, as well as some gendered features.

Mining Twitter: Microblogging as a source for psychological wisdom of the crowds. Behavior Research Methods.

by Ulf-Dietrich Reips

Co-authored by Pablo Garaizar, published in Behavior Research Methods: Reips, U.-D., & Garaizar, P. (2011). Mining Twitter: Microblogging as a source for psychological wisdom of the crowds. Behavior Research Methods, 43, 635-642. doi http://dx.doi.org/10.3758/s13428-011-0116-6

Over the last few years, microblogging has gained prominence as a form of personal broadcasting media where... more Over the last few years, microblogging has gained prominence as a form of personal broadcasting media where information and opinion are mixed together without an established order, usually tightly linked with current reality. Location awareness and promptness provide researchers using the Internet with the opportunity to create “psychological landscapes"—that is, to detect differences and changes in voiced (twittered) emotions, cognitions, and behaviors. In our article, we present iScience Maps, a free Web service for researchers, available from http://maps.iscience.deusto.es/ and http://tweet miner.eu/. Technologically, the service is based on Twitter's streaming and search application programming interfaces (APIs), accessed through several PHP libraries, and a Java- Script frontend. This service allows researchers to assess via Twitter the effect of specific events in different places as they are happening and to make comparisons between cities, regions, or countries regarding psychological states and their evolution in the course of an event. In a step-by-step example, it is shown how to replicate a study on affective and personality characteristics inferred from first names (Mehrabian & Piercy, Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 19, 755–758 1993) by mining Twitter data with iScience Maps. Results from the original study are replicated in both world regions we tested (the western U.S.and the U.K.); we also discover base rate of names to be a confound that needs to be controlled for in future research.

Zur Abkürzung der Homonymität in griechischen Inschriften

by Christina Kokkinia

Renaming the Name: Glissant and Walcott's Reconstruction of the Caribbean Self

by Valérie Loichot

Saint-John Perse's Imagined Shelter: J'habiterai mon nom

by Valérie Loichot

Encoding the Language of Landscape: XML and Databases at the Service of Anglo-Saxon Lexicography

by Peter Stokes

With E. Pierazzo. Perspectives on Lexicography in Italy and Europe, ed. by S. Bruti, R. Cella, and M. Foschi Albert (Newcastle, 2009), 203–38

Ich, Anna Hartzerin, genannt von Maegelsperg...

by Christof Rolker

3. “I’ sapea già di tutti quanti ’l nome”: percorsi della nominazione e appellativi in Dante

by Valentina Atturo

published in «Critica del testo» XII/2-3 (2009), pp. 261-306.

This article outlines a phenomenology of the name functions in the Divine Comedy joining the onomastic component with... more This article outlines a phenomenology of the name functions in the Divine Comedy joining the onomastic component with the epithets. The onomastic side plays different roles: it bends the deixis to the demands of mimesis, summarizes the status or the episodic story of the character, allowing us to initiate comparisons between female characters and it reflects metaliterary instances. With regard to Dante’s guides, the system of names adapts to the two narratological thrusts supporting the poem macrostructure: verticality, represented by Virgil and Stazio’s nominal progression, and circularity, taken from Matelda and Beatrice, whose nominations constantly come back on themselves, in retrospective.

Toponymy and Monopoly: One Toponym, Two Parents – Ideological Hebraization of Arabic Place Names in the Israeli Language

by Ghil'ad Zuckermann

Onoma 41: 163-184. (2011)

Zuckermann, Ghil'ad 2011. ‘Toponymy and Monopoly: One Toponym, Two Parents – Ideological Hebraization of Arabic Place... more Zuckermann, Ghil'ad 2011. ‘Toponymy and Monopoly: One Toponym, Two Parents – Ideological Hebraization of Arabic Place Names in the Israeli Language’, Onoma 41: 163-184.

ABSTRACT

אם איננה חדשה– הגדולה שבמעלות למלה חדשה
‘The greatest virtue of a new word is that it is not new’
(Pínes 1893: 61)

אַ קלוגער פֿאַרשטייט פֿון איין וואָרט צוויי
‘A wise man hears one word and understands two’
(Yiddish proverb, cf. Bernstein 1908: 243)

In 1950, two years after the establishment of the State of Israel, Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion (born Grün) founded the Geographical Names Committee for the Hebraization of Arabic toponyms in the Negev, the southern part of Israel. The committee worked for 6 months and suggested 537 names.

Analysing The Government Year-Book of 1950-1, I have found that the Committee used three main methods for suggesting Israeli replacements:

1. Phonetic matching of the Arabic toponym with a pre-existent Hebrew item.

2. Literal translation of the Arabic toponym into ‘Hebrew’ (in fact, Israeli – see Zuckermann 2008).

3. Linking the place to a site mentioned in the Hebrew scriptures, especially the Old Testament, and suggesting the ancient Hebrew toponym.

Of the 537 neologisms suggested by the Committee, 175 were phonetic matches, 167 literal translations and 124 ancient Hebrew toponyms linked to the present sites. The remaining 71 included other kinds of neologization such as euphemistic enantiosemic translation. For example, the semantically positive Hebrew-descent toponym en yáhav, lit. ‘The Spring of Hope’, replaced the semantically negative Arabic toponym `ajn alwabá', lit. ‘The Spring of Plague’. Similarly, the Arabic toponym bi:r ħíndis ‘The Well of Darkness’ was translated as beér orá ‘The Well of Light’. However, the initial name for this place – coined by the soldiers of the Israeli Army Engineering Corps who stayed there while building the road to Eilat in 1949-50 – was beér handasá, lit. ‘The Well of (the) Engineering (Corps)’, a phonetic matching of the Arabic bi:r ħíndis.

Based on such examples from Israel’s efforts in building and defining itself as a nation – as well as from rejective and adoptive lexical engineering by Jews throughout history – this paper explores the intricate and fascinating relationship between names and identity.


Concluding Remarks

Juliet: What’s in a name?
Answer: A lot!

Juliet: That which we call a rose
By any other word would smell as sweet.
Retort: Not in the Middle East!


References

Anttila, Raimo 1989. Historical and Comparative Linguistics. Amsterdam – Philadelphia: John Benjamins. (2nd Edition)
Avinery, Isaac 1946. kibushéy haivrít bedorénu (The Achievements of Modern Hebrew). Palestine: ‘Sifriat Poalim’ Workers’ Book-Guild. (in Israeli)
Bar-Itzhak, Haya 1996. polín – agadót reshít: etnopoétika vekorót agadatiím (Legends of Origin of the Jews of Poland: Ethnopoetics and Legendary Chronicles). Tel Aviv: Poalim. (in Israeli)
Blanc, Haim 1989. leshón bney adám (Human Language). Jerusalem: The Bialik Institute.
Gordon, Judah Leib 1883. kol shiréy górdon (All Judah Leib Gordon’s Poems), vol. i. (in Hebrew)
Gordon, Judah Leib 1956. kitvéy yehudá leyb górdon – shirá (Judah Leib Gordon’s Works – Poetry). Tel Aviv: Dvir. (Gordon lived between the years 1831-92) (in Hebrew)
Jastrow, Marcus 1903. A Dictionary of the Targumim, The Talmud Babli and Yerushalmi, and the Midrashic Literature. Jerusalem: Horev.
Klausner, Joseph G. 1949. halashón haivrít – lashón khayá: hakhyaatá shel halashón haivrít al yesodót madaiím (The Hebrew Language – A Living Language: The Revival of the Hebrew Language on Scientific Foundations). Jerusalem: Va’ad HaLashon HaIvrit – Bialik Institute. (2nd Edition) (in Israeli)
Kol Makóm veAtár (Israel – Sites and Places) 1985 (1st Edition: 1953). Ministry of Defence – Carta.
Maisler, Binyamin (later Mazar) 1932. ‘reshimát hashemót hageográfiim shehuvú baséfer Transliteration vekhú’ (List of the Geographical Names Mentioned in the Book Transliteration etc.). Lešonénu 4, Supplement to No. 3, pp. 13-48. (in Israeli)
Rosen, Mordekhay 1994. mikhmenéy hamilím beivrít (The Secrets of Words in Hebrew). Dik. (in Israeli)
Saddan, Dov 1955. ‘dilúg rav vekhayotsé baéle (bisuméy lashón)’ (dilúg rav ‘telegraph’ (lit. ‘big leap’) etc.). Leshonenu La’am 6 (54-5): 33-43. (in Israeli)
Schleicher, August 1860. Die Deutsche Sprache. Stuttgart: J. G. Cotta.
Shakespeare, William. Romeo and Juliet.
Shmeruk, Chone 1987. A shpigl oyf [=af] a shteyn: antologye. poezie un proze fun tsvelf farshnitene yidishe shraybers in ratn-farband (A Mirror on the Stone: Anthology. Poetry and Proze of Twelve Different Yiddish Authors in the Soviet Union). Jerusalem: Magnes. (2nd Edition; 1st Edition: 1964) (in Yiddish)
Shnatón HaMemshalá h.t.sh.y.. (The [Israel] Government Year-Book 1950-1) 1951. (in Israeli)
Singh, Rajendra 1987. ‘Well formedness Conditions and Phonological Theory’. Phonologica1984 (Proceedings of the Fifth International Phonology Meeting, Eisenstadt, 25-28 June 1984). in Wolfgang U. Dressler et al. (eds), Cambridge University Press, pp. 273-285.
Tazkír HaVáad HaLeumí lememshélet érets yisraél al shitát haktív behaatakát hashemót hageográfiim vehapratiím (Memorandum of the National Committee to the Government of Eretz Yisrael on the Spelling Method of Copying Geographical and Personal Names) 1932. Lešonénu 4, Supplement to No. 3, pp. 1-12.
Vilnay, Zev (born Vilensky) 1940. ‘shemót lishuvím ivriím halekukhím mishemót arviím’ (Names of Jewish Settlements taken from Arabic Names). Lešonénu 10 (4): 323-31. (in Israeli)
Yule, Henry and A. C. Burnell 1903. Hobson-Jobson: A Glossary of Colloquial Anglo-Indian Words and Phrases, and of Kindred Terms (Etymological, Historical. Geographical and Discursive). London: John Murray. (1st Edition: 1886)
Weinreich, Uriel 1955. ‘Yiddish Blends with a Slavic Element’. Word 2: 603-10.
Wexler, Paul 1991. ‘Yiddish – the fifteenth Slavic language’. International Journal of the Sociology of Language 91: 1-150, 215-25.
Zuckermann, Ghil‘ad 1999. Review of Nakdimon Shabbethay Doniach and Ahuvia Kahane (eds), The Oxford English-Hebrew Dictionary, OUP, 1998. International Journal of Lexicography 12: 325-46.
Zuckermann, Ghil‘ad 2000. ‘Camouflaged Borrowing: “Folk-Etymological Nativization” in the Service of Puristic Language Engineering’. D.Phil. Thesis, University of Oxford.
Zuckermann, Ghil‘ad 2003. Language Contact and Lexical Enrichment in Israeli Hebrew. London – New York: Palgrave Macmillan.
Zuckermann, Ghil‘ad 2008. Israelít Safá Yafá (Israeli, a Beautiful Language: Hebrew as Myth). Tel Aviv: Am Oved.




Introduction

‫הגדולה שבמעלות למלה חדשה – אם איננה חדשה‬
Hagdolá shebamaalót lemilá khadashá – im enená khadashá.
“The greatest virtue of a new word is that it is not new.”
(Pínes 1893, 61)

‫אַ קלוגער פֿאַרשטייט פֿון איין וואָרט צוויי‬
A klúger farshtéyt fun eyn vort tsvey.
“A wise man hears one word and understands two.”
(Yiddish proverb, cf. Bernstein 1908, 243)

“What’s in a name? That which we call a rose by any other name
would smell as sweet”, says Juliet to Romeo (or Yael to Ram, as per
a fin-de-siècle translation to Modern Hebrew) in a piece by the famous

164

playwright referred to by Libyan leader Muammar al-Qaddafi as
“Sheikh Zubeir”. There are cases in which the name is extremely
important because it determines the way people perceive the thing it
stands for. Just as thought influences language, language can shape
thought. It was Confucius who said 2,500 years ago that the first thing
a politician has to do is to rectify names!
Indeed, in 1950, two years after the establishment of the State of
Israel (1948), Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion—Ben-Gurion being
a Hebraization of his original surname Grün—founded the Geograph-
ical Names Committee for the Hebraization of Arabic toponyms in the
Negev, the southern part of Israel. The committee worked for six
months and suggested 537 names.
This article consists of three parts: it will first explore mecha-
nisms of neologization involving more than one source; it will then
analyse examples of such mechanisms throughout Jewish history, and
it will finally propose that these mechanisms were prevalent in the
ideological hebraization of Arabic toponyms requested by Ben-Gurion.
Talking about names, I use the term Israeli )see Zuckermann
1999) to refer to the language otherwise known as Modern Hebrew.
The reason is that the beautiful language spoken in today’s Israel is a
multifaceted and fascinating fin-de-siècle hybrid, based not only on
“sleeping beauty” (or alternatively, “walking dead”) Hebrew but also
on the revivalists’ mother tongues such as Yiddish.

1. Etymythological nativization

Onomastics is sometimes separated from the field of lexicography.
But in Israeli many mechanisms of lexical expansion occur in the case
of toponyms—and anthroponyms (see Grün → Ben-Gurion above)—
exactly as they do in “normal” lexical items. Consider the numerous
neologisms deriving from more than one source (one toponym, two
parents), a phenomenon of lexical enrichment referred by Zuckermann
(2003) as multisourced neologization. An example of such multi-
sourced neologization is the widespread process of etymythological
nativization. But before describing it, let us first define etymythology.
Etymythology (i.e. mythological etymology) is also known as
popular etymology, folk-etymology, fake etymology, synchronic ety-
mology and even para-etymology (cf. paretimologia – cf. paretimolo-
gia, the usual Italian term for it. However, despite its having so many

Ghil‘ad Zuckermann

Toponymy and

monopoly

165

names, it has not been paid enough attention—as scholars such as
Coates (1987) rightly assert. Definitions of etymythology vary. Some
emphasize the subconscious (erroneous, nincompoopish) nature of the
derivation (see Bolinger 1975, 406–407; Crystal 1993). Others focus
on the reshaping of the word/phrase (see Trask 1993, 105). The phe-
nomenon usually involves the fallacy that phonetic similarity means
genetic relationship.
Figuratively speaking, the etymythologizer applies his/her Apol-
lonian tendency (cf. la tendenza apollinea in Pisani 1967, 160). Gen-
erally, the Apollonian tendency is the wish to describe and create
order, especially with unfamiliar information or new experience. An
updated, albeit frivolous, example of this general tendency is the story
of the South Dakotan who went to Athens and was happily surprised
to find out that the Greeks are NASA fans: wherever he went, he saw
the name Apollo. As this anecdote shows, the Apollonian tendency
would also seem to include a significant dimension of ethnocentricity.
Specifically in linguistics, the “Apollonian tendency” is mani-
fested in justifications for the use of a word and in the craving for
meaningfulness. Consider the perception of naïve young Israeli read-
ers of the name dóktor sus (cf. Dr Seuss [‘dækt¢(r) su:s]), the pseud-
onym of Theodore Seuss Geisel, American author and illustrator of
children’s books (1904–1991). Many Israelis are certain that he is
“Dr Horse” since the Israeli word sus means ‘horse’. Note the seren-
dipitous prevalence of animals in Dr Seuss’s stories.
Most importantly, our understanding of etymythology would be
enhanced by providing a clear-cut distinction between (1) merely pas-
sive derivational-only etymythology, i.e. cases of mistaken derivation,
where there is rationalization ex post facto, and (2) active, creative gen-
erative etymythology. The distinction is crucial, although often deriva-
tional-only etymythology is the first stage of generative etymythology.
One of the most common mechanisms of generative etymythol-
ogy is etymythological nativization: a camouflaged borrowing in
which a foreign lexical item is matched with a phonetically (and
sometimes also semantically) similar pre-existent native word/root. In
other words, “etymythological nativization” is a multi-sourced neolo-
gism that preserves the (approximate) sound of the parallel expression
in the source-language, using pre-existent target-language elements
(and that sometimes has a similar meaning to the source-language
expression).

166

Unlike morphemic adaptation, which only uses target-language
grammatical morphemes such as noun-patterns, etymythological
nativization is a kind of neologization that makes use of pre-existent
full target-language lexical items to replace the source-language word.
There are three types of etymythological nativization—according to
the degree of semantic affinity between the source-language expres-
sion and the original target-language expression—before the latter
undergoes etymythological nativization. This degree of affinity is on
a continuum.

1. Phonetic matching (PM)—where the target-language material is
originally similar to the source-language lexical item phonetically
but not semantically.
2. Semanticized phonetic matching (SPM)—where the target-lan-
guage material is originally similar to the source-language lexical
item phonetically, as well as semantically albeit in a loose way.
3. Phono-semantic matching (PSM)—where the target-language
material is originally similar to the source-language lexical item
both phonetically and semantically.

An example of the latter, phono-semantic matching, is the Israeli word
dibúv ‘dubbing’, concocted in the late twentieth century to domesticate
the English word dubbing with the pre-existent Hebrew word [dib’bub]
‘inducing (someone) to speak; speech’. See the figure below:

Ghil‘ad Zuckermann

English
dubbing

Israeli Hebrew
‫דיבוב‬
dibúb/divúv
‘dubbing’



(Medieval) Hebrew
‫דבוב‬
[dib’bub] ‘speech’
‘inducing someone to speak’
(in Israeli Hebrew)



cf. ‫דובב שׂפתי ישנים‬
(Song of Songs, 7:10)

An older phono-semantic matching, officially proposed on 27 April
1890 in the Hebrew newspaper HaZefira (published in Warsaw) is
mishkafáim ‘glasses’. The coiner, Chaim Leib Hazan, from Hrodna,
chose the (Biblical) Hebrew root √Òqp (the root of mishkafáim) “because

Toponymy and

monopoly

167

of its similarity to the Greek word skopéw skopéo (‘I look at’), which
appears in the names for all glass lenses in the languages of Europe:
telescope, microscope, kaleidoscope and the like” (see Zuckermann
2003, 1). See the figure below:

Ancient Greek
skopéw
skopéo
‘I look at’
cf. Yiddish ‫ שפאַקולן‬shpakúln
‘spectacles’ (Lithuanian
Yiddish ‫ ספאַקולן‬spakúln);
English spectacles



Israeli
‫משקפיים‬
mishkafáim
‘glasses,
spectacles’

(Biblical) Hebrew
‫שק״פ‬
√Òqp
‘look out/through’



Phono-semantic matching is widespread inter alia in the following
language categories:

1. “Reinvented”, standardized and puristically-oriented languages,
in which language-planners attempt to replace undesirable loan-
words, e.g. Israeli, Revolutionized Turkish (Zuckermann 2003) and
Icelandic.
2. Languages using “phono-logographic” script, e.g. Chinese and Japa-
nese, in the latter to the extent that kanji are used (Zuckermann 2003).
3. Pidgins and creoles, where owing to the high number of languages
involved in the hybridization, lexical conflation occurs naturally,
e.g. Tok Pisin and Jamaican Creole (Zuckermann 2003).

Phonetic matching is common in secret argots, where speakers camou-
flage lexical items to make them unrecognizable to outsiders, e.g.
Judaeo-German, Jewish secret languages and thief argots (Zuckermann
2003). It can be found in minority languages, where attempts are made
to create pure identity and sometimes to prevent outsiders from under-
standing key utterances, e.g. Romany. It is widespread in migrants’
languages—consider American Italian bimbo (‘child’) ‘beam’, giuro (‘I
swear’) ‘Jew’ and grasso (‘fat, greasy’) ‘gas’ (Livingston 1918, 225).
But given the widespread, natural Apollonian tendency, phonetic
matching is obviously common in numerous other languages. A simple
example of phonetic matching in English is mayday, which nativizes

168

French m’aider ‘(to) help me!’ (according to the Radio Telegraph
Convention in 1927; Oxford English dictionary [OED]) or Dialectal/
Colloquial French m’aidez ‘help me!’ (in contrast to Standard French
aidez-moi) or French venez m’aider ‘come to help me!’ (cf. OED).
The meaning of the pre-existent English lexical items May and day
have nothing to do with ‘help’. Note that the currently common calls
for help in French are au secours ‘help!, assist!’ and aidez-moi ‘help
me!’
The first Spanish sailors who encountered Nahuatl (Aztec)
ahuakatl ‘Persea gratissima, avocado’ (lit. ‘testicle’), adapted it pho-
netically as aguacate (this is the current Spanish word for ‘avocado’
and may have been influenced by Spanish agua ‘water’). However, in
some places this adaptation was matched phonetically with Old Span-
ish avocado, lit. ‘advocate’ (cf. Contemporary Spanish abogado
‘advocate’, cf. Spanish evocado ‘recalled, evoked, invoked’), although
of course, ‘advocate’ has nothing to do with the large testicle-shaped
fruit. Note that Spanish avocado entered English in the late seven-
teenth century as alligator (pear), again a phonetic matching.
The Apollonian tendency is the reason for phonetic matching
being prevalent also in the case of toponyms. Consider the following:

• Tamil [amba†’†a∞] (/ampa†’†a∞/), lit. ‘barber’ (also a Hindu caste
traditionally of hairdressers), the name of a bridge in Mylapore, an
old cultural citadel of Madras (currently Chennai): a phonetic
matching—perhaps via Ambuton (Yule and Burnell 1886, cf. 1903,
67a)—of Hamilton, the name of the engineer who built it. Intrigu-
ingly, the Tamil name was later re-adopted in English as Barber’s
Bridge.
• Latin unguentum Neapolitanum, lit. ‘Neapolitan ointment’ was
nativized in German as umgewendten Napoleon, lit. ‘turned around
Napoleon’ (cf. Schleicher 1860, 116).
• French Château-Thierry was referred to by American soldiers in
1918 as Shadow Theory (cf. Anttila 1989, 93).
• Geras ‘old people’ (cf. Greek gòras ‘old age’), the name of a
Roman town in Jordan (Jarash) entered Arabic as ‫‘[ جرش‬d”®araÒ]
‘crop, grinding’.
• Nahuatl (Aztec) cuauhnahuac, lit. ‘near the trees, beside the forest’
(a place currently in Mexico) > Spanish Cuernavaca (cuerna ‘horn,
glass made of horn’ + vaca ‘cow’.

Ghil‘ad Zuckermann

Toponymy and

monopoly

169

Besides the universal Apollonian tendency, one of the main moti-
vations for toponymic phonetic matching might have been iconicity,
the belief that there is something intrinsic about the sound of names.
The very iconicity might be the reason for refraining from translating
Hallelujah and Amen in so many languages, as if the sounds of such
basic religious notions have to do with their referents themselves—as
if by losing the sound, one might lose the meaning. This brings us to
etymythology in Jewish tradition.The gematric (numerological) value
of ‫‘ יין‬wine’ is 70 (‫ )05 = ן ;01< = י ;01 = י‬and this is also the gemat-
ric value of ‫‘ סוד‬secret’ (‫ .)4 = ד ;6 = ו ;06 = ס‬Thus, this sentence,
according to many Jews at the time, had to be true.

2. Rejective vs. adoptive toponymic matching in Jewish tradition

Besides the universal phenomena of iconicity and the Apollonian ten-
dency, toponymic phonetic matches have been widespread throughout
Jewish history because of the Jewish midrashic tradition of homiletic
commentary on the Hebrew scriptures. In these midrashim (plural of
midrásh ‘examination, investigation, commentary’), playful puns and the
use of serendipitous similarity between etymologically-distinct words
were employed in the service of interpretation. In later generations too,
wordplay has been a conspicuous feature of Jewish oral argumentation—
cf. pilpul (lit. ‘peppering’) Producing a witticism (in both the general and
the contemptuous use of this word itself), reflecting humour at the
expense of another—and extremely often at the expense of oneself—has
been most welcome in Judaism throughout the generation.
I distinguish between rejective etymythological toponyms and
adoptive ones—according to whether negative or positive meaning is
associated with the material used to match the original name. Whereas
rejective toponyms originate in Othering, us versus them, adoptive
toponyms reflect appropriation and cultural flirting. Let us begin with
the “bad ones”.

2.1. Rejective lexical engineering: Othering

Rejective lexical engineering manifests, among other things, the phe-
nomenon of Othering, defining and securing one’s own (positive) iden-
tity through (the stigmatization of) the Other. The Other is what permits
us to discover—and even constitute—the Self. The Self is defined in

170

relation to Others; we define ourSelves through the Others: us versus
them. Consider the following toponymic matches in Jewish tradition:

• Medieval Hebrew !amaleq ‘Amalek’, a nation epitomizing evil since
the days of the Old Testament, was used to refer to hostile Armenia.
• Lithuanian Ashkenazic Hebrew ra dom (cf. Yiddish ra dam, from
Hebrew ra! dam) ‘of bad blood’ is a rejective match for Polish
Radom, the name of a town in Poland (approximately 100 km south
of Warsaw), or of its Yiddish adaptation ród¢m (see Weinreich 1955,
609; Wexler 1991, 42). Thus, if a pogrom had occurred in Radom,
it would have been rationalized by ra dam ‘of bad blood’. Obviously,
providing such an etymythological explanation for the pogrom was
regarded by some Jews as a mere wordplay. However, others might
have conceived of ra dom as having deep intrinsic truth, which might
have been religiously and homiletically based. One should remember
that at that time it was a common belief that all languages were God-
created and that Hebrew was the divine Ursprache.
• Ostra (south-east of Rovno)—cf. Yiddish óstr¢ and Polish Ostróg—
was referred to in Yiddish as óys tóyr¢ ‘without Torah’. However,
by others (or by the same people in other times), it was Ashkenazic
Hebrew oys tóyro or Yiddish ‫ אות תּורה‬os-tór¢, i.e. ‘sign of Torah’
(cf. Bar-Itzhak 1996, 29), which is an adoptive toponym.

Rejective lexical engineering occurs in literary works. In Dovid Hof-
shteyn’s poem Kíndershprukh (first published in 1920, cf. Shmeruk
1987, 261), Kiev is rhymed with Yiddish íev ‘Job’, from Biblical
Hebrew ?iyyoß ‘Job’, the connotation being of distress and disaster,
corresponding to the life story of the biblical Job. A fin de siècle anti-
American Hebrew match is as following:

Ghil‘ad Zuckermann

International
America

Modern Hebrew
(jocular)
‫עמא ריקא‬
!ammå reqå
‘America’
cf. the opening page
of Gershon
Rosenzweig’s
satirical Massékhet
Amérika



Aramaic
‫! עמא‬ammå ‘nation’
+
‫ ריקא‬reqå ‘empty’
cf. ‫עמא פזיזא‬
!ammå p¢zizå ‘hasty nation’
(Talmud: Kethuboth 112a),
referring to the
Israeli nation



Toponymy and

monopoly

171

Similarly, Israeli am reykaní, lit. ‘empty nation’, has been jocularly
replaced (International >) Israeli amerikáni ‘American’. Compare this
to the diametrically opposite Chinese 美国 Modern Standard Chinese
(henceforth MSC) meiguó, Cantonese meikok, lit. ‘beautiful country’,
a domestication of America.
There are, however, also Chinese examples of rejective toponyms
used to propagandize against hostile nations:

• The Turks were called in Classical Chinese 突厥 MSC tujué, con-
sisting of 突 tu ‘attack, invade’ and 厥 jué ‘stone-launcher’ (sixth-
ninth centuries).
• Mongol was allied with Classical Chinese 蒙古 MSC ménggu, con-
sisting of 蒙 méng ‘dark, obscure, abuse’ and 古 gu ‘old, locked,
stubborn’ (introduced around the eleventh century but still used).

On 非洲 MSC feizhou ‘Africa’ (cf. ‘wrong/not continent’), 英国 MSC
yingguó ‘England (cf. ‘hero country’), 海地 MSC haidì ‘Haiti’ (cf. ‘sea
land’), 泰国 MSC tàiguó ‘Thailand’ (cf. ‘safe country’), 德国 déguó
‘Deutschland, Germany’ (cf. ‘virtuous country’, 法国 MSC faguó
‘France’ (cf. ‘law country’) etc., see Zuckermann (2000, 259-262).
Hebrew oys tóyro ‘sign of Torah; Ostra’ and Chinese 美国 MSC
meiguó ‘beautiful country; America’ lead to the discussion of adop-
tive lexical engineering, including ‘politically correct’ toponyms,
which manifest appropriation.

2.2. Adoptive lexical engineering: appropriation

• Mishnaic Hebrew [jå’wån] ‘Hellas, Greece’ (Midrash Rabba to
Genesis 44), from:
1. Greek I3nia ‘Ionia’
2. Biblical Hebrew [jå’wån] ‘one of Japheth’s sons, the name of a
people’ (Genesis 10:2)

On Medieval Hebrew sprd (Israeli sfarád) ‘Spain’, Medieval Hebrew
?Òknz (Israeli ashkenáz) ‘Germany, Ashkenaz’, see Zuckermann (2000,
137-41).

• Ashkenazic Hebrew shapíro ‘Speyer’ (a town near Heidelberg,
Germany), from:
1. Yiddish shpéy¢r, German Speyer (toponym)

172

2. Aramaic shappirå ‘beautiful’, the feminine form of Aramaic
shappir (Daniel 4:9) ‘handsome, pleasing, good, cheerful’

The positive connotation of this toponymic match might explain its
frequent appearance in many Jewish surnames appearing from the
beginning of the sixteenth century, e.g. Shpiro, Shapirin, Shapira,
Sapir (cf. Beider 1993, 532b). The dynamics between tonomymy and
anthroponymy is a fascinating topic, which deserves its own paper.

• Ashkenazic Hebrew mógeyn vetsíno ‘Mainz’ (cf. Wexler 1991: 42),
from:
1. Hebrew magéntsa ‘Mainz’, Yiddish magénts¢, Polish Moguncja,
Latin Maguntia (Moguntia, Mogontiacum) (toponym).
2. Biblical Hebrew mågen w¢Òinnå, a tautological dvandva con-
junction which appears in Jeremiah 46:3, Ezekiel 39:9 and
Psalms 35:2, meaning ‘shield and shield’.

• Ashkenazic Hebrew har adonoy ‘Hrodna, Grodno’ (Weinreich
1955, 610), from:
1. Yiddish gródn¢, Polish Grodno, Belorussian Hrodna, Russian
Grodno Gródno (toponym).
2. Ashkenazic Hebrew har adonoy ‘The mount of the Lord’, from
Hebrew har ?adonåy, cf. har yy ‘The mount of the Lord’ in
Isaiah 2:3.

Consider Medieval Hebrew polin ‘Poland’. Blanc (1989, 57) claims
that there is no reason for its [i] vowel, cf. Yiddish póyln, Polish Polska
(polski ‘Polish’), Russian Polàja Pól’sha, Italian Polonia, English
Poland. This might lead to the conclusion that is a semanticized pho-
netic matching based on the Hebrew autochthonous root √lyn ‘lodge,
stay, dwell’.
Blanc mentions the well-known popular rationalization according
to which “when the Jews came to Poland, the skies ordered them to
stay there”. A detailed investigation is presented by Bar-Itzhak (1996,
30-7). However, my explanation, which may refute Blanc’s claim
regarding the [i] (y) in pwlyn, is that Yiddish póyln was spelled in
pre-Modern Yiddish as pwlyn or as pwylyn (cf. the current spelling
pwyln). Note that the pronunciation of (Medieval Hebrew >) Israeli
pwlyn by some speakers of Israeli, especially in the past, has been
pólin, which resembles the German and the Yiddish forms (as distinct

Ghil‘ad Zuckermann

Toponymy and

monopoly

173

from polín). This pronunciation could serve to strengthen the ortho-
graphic explanation. It seems that Medieval Hebrew pwlyn was not
an etymythological nativization ab initio but rather a mere phonetic
adaptation that has been rationalized etymythologically ex post facto.
Another name for Poland is Israeli polánya, which could be rean-
alysed as po lan ya ‘Here stays God’. The term might have been
induced by analogy to other Israeli country names corresponding to
the feminine form of the noun which refers to the person who lives in
the country (or to the feminine adjective), cf. ángliya ‘England’ versus
angliyá ‘English (feminine)’, and rúsya ‘Russia’ versus rusiyá ‘Russian
(feminine)’. Consider also Italian Polonia ‘Poland’.

2.3. Etymythological toponyms in the Haskalah period

Toponymic matches were very common among maskilim, followers of
the Jewish Enlightenment movement Haskalah in Germany (1770s-
1880s; cf. Aufklärung), led by the philosopher Moses Mendelssohn
(1729-86) and the poet, linguist and exegete Naphtali Herz Wessely
(1725-1805, also known as Váyz§). Consider the following examples:

• Maskilic Hebrew poyálo tóvo (Israeli poalá tavá), lit. ‘good work-
ingman/labourer’—an Aramaic expression appearing in the Talmud
as [po!ala †åßå] (cf. Jastrow 1903, 281b, 1145a)—was the name
some maskilim used for Poltava, a city in the Ukraine (south-west
of Kharkov, east of Kiev), with a thriving Jewish community—
cf. Yiddish poltáv¢, Russian Poltava Poltáva and Polish Po¥tawa
(cf. Avinery 1946, 135; Klausner 1949, 97).
• Maskilic Hebrew sar to(y)v, lit. ‘good ruler’, was a matching of Rus-
sian Saratov Sarátov (the name of a city in Russia)—cf. Weinreich
(1955. 610, fn.).
• Maskilic Hebrew harérey élef (or harérey ólef) (see Saddan 1955, 40)
stands for International (The) Alps—cf. Russian Alàpx Ál’py and
Polish Alpy. Biblical Hebrew [har¢’re ‘?ålep] (Psalms 50:10) means
‘a thousand hills’ (cf. Israeli haálpim ‘The Alps’). In Israeli this expres-
sion could be understood as ‘mountains of a thousand (metres)’. Note
that only the second part of harérey élef is a matching.
• Maskilic Hebrew i shfánim, lit. ‘island of coneys’ (shfaním could
colloquially also mean ‘rabbits’), referring to the Iberian peninsula,
was used by Gordon (as khatsí í hashfaním ‘peninsula of coneys’)

174

in his poem bimtsulót yam (In the Depths of Sea)—cf. Gordon
(1956: 107a). It is a phonetic matching of Latin Ispania, or His-
pania—cf. Greek ?????? Spanía, Russian Ispaniq Ispániya,
Polish Hiszpania, Old English Ispania.

The origin of Latin Hispania, the name of the Roman Province, is
the Phoenician name for the western areas of the Mediterranean Sea,
described by the Phoenicians as “the coast of coneys” (see Rosen
1994, 90). If this theory is true, then Maskilic Hebrew i shfánim might
be an “incestuous” matching, in the sense that the material used in the
target language (TL, here Maskilic Hebrew) is etymologically related
to the nativized item from the source language (SL, here Latin).
Maskilic Hebrew po novi ze (Israeli po naví ze), lit. ‘here (this) is
my (beautiful) dwelling’, was a matching of Yiddish pónivezh, the name
of the town in Lithuania, famous for its Jewish centre (cf. Lithuanian
Yiddish pónivez) (used by Gordon 1883, 151, cf. Klausner 1949,
97).
Hebrew nwh—originally pronounced [nå’we]—‘(beautiful) dwell-
ing’, which participates in Maskilic Hebrew po novi ze leads to the
discussion of ideological hebraization of Arabic place names in Israeli.

3. Hebraization of Arabic place-names in Israeli: reclamation

Israeli uses the Semitic feature known as construct-state (smikhút), in
which two nouns are combined, the first being modified or possessed
by the second. For example, repúblikat banánot, lit. ‘republic bananas’,
denotes ‘banana republic’.
Hebrew [nå’we] ‘dwelling’ is often used as nomen rectum (gov-
erned noun) in Israeli toponyms constituting a construct state, for exam-
ple nevé-atív on Mount Hermon in northern Israel. In Biblical Hebrew
there are two different [nå’we], deriving from two distinct roots,
both spelled as √nwh (cf. √nwy). Biblical Hebrew √1nwh means ‘pas-
ture site in the desert’ (see II Samuel 7:8), ‘dwelling, habitation’ (see
II Samuel 15:25)—cf. Arabic [‘nawa:] ‘emigrated, wandered (m, sg)’
and Biblical Hebrew n?wt (e.g. Joel 2:22, Amos 1:2). Biblical Hebrew
√2nwh means ‘beautiful, comely’ (see Jeremiah 6:2) and is a variant
of Biblical Hebrew n?wh—cf. Arabic [‘nawwaha] ‘extolled, praised,
raised, elevated (m, sg)’, ‘excelled (m, sg)’, Mishnaic Hebrew n?h
‘beautiful’, Mishnaic Hebrew nwy [noj] ‘beauty’, Biblical Hebrew √y?h
(cf. √y?y) ‘be beautiful’ (Jeremiah 10:7) and Aramaic y?y ‘beautiful’.

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175

Biblical Hebrew √1nwh was the nomen rectum of several biblical
construct state toponyms, e.g. [n¢’we ?e’tån] (Jeremiah 49:19, 50:44)
and [n¢’we tan’nim] (Isaiah 34:13, 35:7). Therefore, the modern use
of nevé- could be regarded as deriving directly from these biblical
construct-states alone—cf. Israeli nevé shaanán (inter alia, the name
of a neighbourhood of Tel Aviv, Haifa and Jerusalem), from Biblical
Hebrew [nå’we ∫a?a’nån] (Isaiah 33:20).
However, I suspect that, as usual, the reality is much more com-
plex, characterized by multiple causation—with several elements
simultaneously influencing the creation of some toponyms with nevé-:

Arabic [‘nabi:] ‘prophet’. Examples include the following:
• Israeli nevé danyél, lit. ‘Daniel’s dwelling’, the name of a com-
munal settlement in Mount Judaea, matches phonetically Ara-
bic [?an’nabi: dan’jal] ‘the Prophet Daniel’. It was named after
the Israeli convoy called in Arabic [?an’nabi: dan’jal], which
returned from this area on 27 March 1948 and was attacked by
Arabs near Bethlehem.
• Israeli nevé yamín, lit. ‘the right side dwelling’ or ‘the dwell-
ing of Yamin’ )a biblical name, e.g. the son of Simon, Jacob’s
son), a moshav (smallholders’ cooperative settlement) near
Kfar Sava in central Israel. This is a phonetic matching of
Arabic [?an’nabi: ja’mi:n] ‘the Prophet Yamin’, and was thus
named in accordance with the Arabic tradition that it is the
place where Benjamin, Jacob’s son, is buried. Benjamin is
called in Arabic [binja’mi:n] and on occasion [ja’mi:n]—cf.
(the now rare) [‘jamana]/[‘jamina]/[‘jamuna] ‘was lucky, for-
tunate (m)’, [‘jumn] ‘luck’, [maj’mu:n] ‘lucky’ and [ja’mi:n]
‘right hand’; see also Entsiklopédya Mikraít (iii:701).
(ii) International new, cf. Russian novxî nóvyi, e.g. Novxî Afon
nóvyi afón ‘New Athens’ in Abkhaz; Novxî Arbat nóvyi arbát,
a street in Moscow, established in the 1960s; Novxe Werëmu-
jki nóvye cher6mushki, a neighbourhood in Moscow which is
much newer and more beautiful than the preceding Cher6mushki.
Compare these with Slovene Nova Gorica, a city in Slovenia,
near Gorizia, Italy, as well as with German neu(e), English new,
e.g. New Hampshire and New York.
(iii) Biblical Hebrew √2nwh ‘beautiful, comely’.
(iv) (Hebrew>) Israeli nevé-midbár, a widespread construct-state
which literally means ‘dwelling of desert’, referring to ‘oasis’.

176

The last three inputs are apparent in the tendency to use Israeli nevé-
in the names of new and supposedly attractive neighbourhoods of
existing cities. Israeli nevé- is associated with a place which is green,
non-urban, different from its environment. Consider Nevé Savyoním
near Savyon in central Israel, Nevé Avivím and Nevé Dan in Tel Aviv,
Nevé Granót (1963) and Nevé Yaakóv (1924) in Jerusalem, and Nevé
Khaím (1950) in Hadera.

3.1. “Judaization” of Arabic toponyms in the Negev (1950)

It is instructive to compare and contrast the policy of David Ben-
Gurion, Israel’s first Prime Minister, and Lee Kuan Yew of Singapore.
Lee Kuan Yew shrewdly kept Malay as an important symbolic lan-
guage in Singapore. Thus, although it would be extremely hard for
anyone to find a Malay/Indian pilot or high officer in the Singaporean
Army (they are all Chinese) or a Chinese cleaning lady at the National
University of Singapore (NUS), the national anthem and the army
commands are in Malay rather than in English, Mandarin or Hokkien!
Such an advanced pro forma lip service is impossible in Israel. The
Jewish psyche would not tolerate singing the Israeli national anthem
in Arabic. Everything must be in ‘Hebrew’.
Ben-Gurion (a phonetic matching of his original surname Grün,
using the Mishnaic Hebrew name [gur’jo:n]) wanted all Israelis, let
alone government officials, to Hebraize their names. In 1950, two years
after the establishment of Israel, Ben-Gurion urgently founded a gov-
ernmental Geographical Names Committee (henceforth GNC) for the
Hebraization (Shnaton HeMemshala 1951, 279 prefers “Judaization”)
of Arabic toponyms in the Negev (in the southern part of Israel). (The
committee was called in Israeli haveadá hageográfit likviát shemót
banégev—mitáam misrád rosh hamemshalá.)
As a rough estimate, the GNC worked for 6 months, had 60 ses-
sions and suggested over 500 Israeli names. The Head of GNC was
Dr Avraham Yaakov Brawer and among its members were Professor
Shmuel Yeivin, Professor David Amiran and Zalman Lif (Lifschitz).
Analysing Shnaton HaMemshala h.t.∫.y.?. (The Government Year-Book
of 1950-1) (1951: 259-311, and especially 279-88), it is possible to
infer that the GNC used three main methods for suggesting Israeli
toponyms:

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1. Matching of the Arabic toponym with a phonetically-similar pre-
existent Hebrew item (i.e. etymythological nativization).
2. Literal translation of the Arabic toponym into Hebrew (cf. calquing).
3. Linking the place to a site mentioned in the Hebrew scriptures,
especially the Old Testament, and suggesting the ancient Hebrew
toponym as a replacement for the Arabic place name.

Of the 537 neologisms suggested by the Committee, 175 were phonetic
matches, 167 literal translations and 124 ancient Hebrew toponyms
linked to the present sites. The remaining 71 included other kinds of
neologization such as the following euphemistic neologisms, each con-
stituting an enantiosemic auto-opposite with its Arabic origin:

• The semantically positive en yáhav, lit. ‘The Spring of Hope’, replaced
the semantically negative Arabic [!ajn alwa’ba?], lit. ‘The Spring
of Plague’; Arabic [wa’ba?] meaning ‘plague, pest, epidemic’.
• Arabic [bi:r ‘hindis] ‘The Well of Darkness’ was translated as
(Hebrew>) Israeli beér orá ‘The Well of Light’. However, the ini-
tial name for this place, coined by the soldiers of the Israeli Army
Engineering Corps who stayed there while building the road to Eilat
in 1949-50, was beér handasá, lit. ‘The Well of (the) Engineering
(Corps)’, a phonetic matching of Arabic [bi:r ‘hindis].

Juxtapose these examples with Benevento, a town (and province) in
Campania, Italy, 50 km north-east of Naples. Benevento is understood
today as ‘good wind’ (Nissan, personal communication) or ‘good event’.
But its original names were actually Maleventum, Malowent and
Maloenton, which meant in the original Italic language neither ‘the
site of bad events’ nor ‘bad wind’. But the Romans re-interpreted the
name and after they won a battle there, they replaced Maleventum with
Beneventum.
Examples of phonetic matches from the suggested 175:

• Arabic [‘d”®abal (al)xa’ru:f], lit. ‘the mountain of the ram/sheep’ >
har kharíf, lit. ‘hot/sharp/fast-flowing mountain’ (p. 282b). Cf. Medi-
eval Hebrew nhl hryf ‘fast-flowing river’, which might have been
taken into account by GNC. In fact, GNC also matched Arabic [‘wadi
xa’ru:f], lit. ‘river of ram/sheep’, with nákhal kharíf, lit. ‘hot/sharp/
fast-flowing River’.

178

• Arabic [?al!unÒu’rijja], currently ‘racism’ (cf. [‘!unÒur] ‘component,
element, race’) > har nétser ‘mountain of sprout’ (p. 284a).
• Arabic [‘d”®abal almah(a)’wijja] (cf. [‘?ahwa:] ‘side of a valley,
dark green colour’, √hwj ‘gather; dark green’) > har mikhyá ‘moun-
tain of living’ (p. 284a).

By using phonetic matching, literal translation and recycling ancient
Hebrew toponyms, the Geographical Names Committee did not
exhaust all the possibilities that were theoretically available. However,
these methods were also prevalent in lexical, non-toponymic, neolo-
gization in Israeli, analysed by Zuckermann (2003).

3.2. Hebraization of Arabic toponyms in other regions

Phonetic matching of Arabic toponyms has been widespread in all
areas of Israel, not only in the Negev. Consider the following:

• har tov, lit. ‘a good mountain’, the name of a settlement located on
a mountain in Judea and having good air, is a phonetic matching
of Arabic [!ar’†u:f], the name of the nearby Arabic village. Vilnay
(1940, 323) intriguingly asserts that the Arabic name is meaning-
less. Perhaps it is a nativization to Latin Aretusa. Note the existence
of the mistaken forms [!ar’tu:f] (Kol Makom Veatar, 136) and
[?ar’†u:f] (Avinery 1946, 139).
• en véred, lit. ‘The Spring of the Rose’, the name of a settlement in
the Sharon area (central Israel), is a recalibration of Arabic [!a’j:un
alwar’da:t], lit. ‘springs (for) the women going down (to draw
water)’ (cf. Vilnay 1940, 325).
• bet gan, lit. ‘The House of the Garden’, the name of a settlement
near the Sea of Galilee (cf. Biblical Hebrew [bet hag’gån], the name
of a place in Samaria, see II Kings 9:27), is a partial phonetic match-
ing of Vernacular Arabic [be:t d®an], lit. ‘The House of the Ghosts’
(Vilnay 1940: 329) (cf. Arabic [d®inn] ‘demons, jinn’, but see also
[‘d®anna] ‘garden’).
• ramát shafát, a neighbourhood in Jerusalem < Arabic [Òu!a’fa:t]
(cf. √Ò!f ‘love, affection’, [Òu’!a:f] ‘madness (love sickness)’).

For further recalibrations, see Maisler (1932), Tazkír HaVáad HaLeumí
(1932) and Vilnay (1940).

Ghil‘ad Zuckermann

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179

Importantly, these concoctions are prescriptive and scholarly,
introduced by clerk rather folk-etymology, by informed language plan-
ners. Sociologically, albeit not structurally, they should be distinguished
from lay, uninformed toponymic matches, such as the following:

• Israeli givát hanóar ‘The Hill of the Youth’ was the name children in
Givataim gave to ‫ גבעת אנואר‬givát ánwar ‘The Hill of Anwar’ (from
the name of an Arab, cf. Arabic [‘?anwar], lit. ‘giving more light’).
• Under the British Mandate, George V Avenue in Jerusalem was
called (Hebrew>) Israeli avínu malkénu, lit. ‘Our Father Our King’
(i.e. ‘Our Lord’).
• Israeli givát haradár, lit. ‘The Hill of the Radar’—the name of a
place near Jerusalem where the British/Jordanian aviation radar was
located from the Second World War until 1967—was matched pho-
netically with the Hebrew name ‫ הר-אדר‬har adár, lit. ‘Mount
Addar’, Addar being the name of a month in the Jewish calendar—
cf. Akkadian addaru.

3.3. Intra-lingual multisourced toponym

An example of an intra-lingual multisourced toponym:

• Israeli aléy zaháv, lit. ‘leaves of gold’, the name of a collective farm
in southern Israel, was coined in the 1980s. It derives from two
sources:
(i) Hebrew!ly zhb ‘golden leaves’ (which are common during
autumn)—arising from the name of the establishing group,
‫ גרעין סתיו‬garín stav, lit. ‘autumn nucleus (core-group)’
(ii) Clipping of !lyzh bgyn, Alizah Begin, wife of Menachem Begin,
then Israel’s Prime Minister. The settlers were supported by
Begin’s Kherut (-Beitar) Party and wished to commemorate his
wife. But they knew that there was no chance of accomplishing
this formally since it was too close to Mrs Begin’s death and
Mrs Begin was not, at least officially, an influential figure her-
self.

4. Concluding remarks

Juliet:
What’s in a name?
Answer: A lot!

180

Juliet:

Retort:

This article analyses toponyms that simultaneously have more than
one etymon (etymological source), championing hybridity and mul-
tiple causation. Special attention was given to toponymic neologisms
proposed by the Geographical Names Committee for the Hebraization
of Arabic toponyms in the Negev, the southern part of Israel, in 1950-
1952. The article contributes towards the development of a typology
of onomastic neologization in general and toponomastics in particular.
Based on examples from Israel’s efforts in building and defining itself
as a nation—as well as from rejective and adoptive lexical engineering
by Jews throughout history—this article explores the intricate and
intriguing relationship between names and identity.

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That which we call a rose
By any other word would smell as sweet.
Not in the Middle East!

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]




Professor Ghil'ad Zuckermann
D.Phil. (Oxford), Ph.D. (Cambridge) (titular), M.A. (Tel Aviv) (summa cum laude)

Chair of Linguistics and Endangered Languages
Australian Research Council (ARC) Discovery Fellow

School of Humanities
The University of Adelaide
SA 5005, Australia

http://www.zuckermann.org/
http://adelaide.academia.edu/zuckermann/
http://www.adelaide.edu.au/directory/ghilad.zuckermann
http://www.facebook.com/zuckermann

Author of Revival Linguistics, Oxford University Press, forthcoming

Author of Israelit Safa Yafa (Israeli - A Beautiful Language), Am Oved, 2008 http://www.zuckermann.org/israelit.html

Author of Language Contact and Lexical Enrichment in Israeli Hebrew, Palgrave Macmillan, 2003 http://www.zuckermann.org/enrichment.html




Ghil‘ad Zuckermann

Toponymy and

monopoly

183

Summary: Toponymy and monopoly: one toponym, two parents; ideological
hebraization of Arabic place-mames in the Israeli language

This article analyses toponyms that simultaneously have more than one etymon
(etymological source), championing hybridity and multiple causation. Special
attention is given to toponymic neologisms proposed by the Geographical
Names Committee for the Hebraization of Arabic toponyms in the Negev, the
southern part of Israel, in 1950-1952. It contributes towards the development
of a typology of onomastic neologization in general and toponomastics in
particular. Based on examples from Israel’s efforts in building and defining
itself as a nation—as well as from rejective and adoptive lexical engineering
by Jews throughout history—this article explores the fascinating and multifac-
eted relationship between names and identity.
“What’s in a name? That which we call a rose by any other name would
smell as sweet”, says Juliet to Romeo (or Yael to Ram, as per a fin-de-siècle
translation to “Modern Hebrew”) in a piece by the famous playwright referred
to by Libyan leader Muammar al-Qaddafi as “Sheikh Zubeir”. There are cases
in which the name is extremely important because it determines the way people
perceive the thing it stands for. Just as thought influences language, language
can shape thought. Already 2,500 years ago Confucius said that the first thing
a politician has to do is to rectify names!

Résumé: Toponymie et monopole: un toponyme, deux parents; hébraïsation
idéologique de noms de lieux arabes dans la langue d’Israël

Cet article analyse les toponymes qui ont simultanément plus d’une ori-
gine étymologique, champions de l’hybridité et de la causalité multiple.
Une attention particulière est accordée aux néologismes toponymiques
proposés par le Comité de toponymie pour l’hébraïsation des toponymes
arabes dans le Néguev, la partie sud d’Israël, en 1950-1952. Il contribue
à l’élaboration d’une typologie de la néologisation onomastique en géné-
ral et en particulier toponymique. Reposant sur des exemples des efforts
d’Israël dans la construction et la définition d’une nation – ainsi que dans
les techniques de rejet et d’adoption lexicaux par les Juifs à travers l’his-
toire – le présent article explore la relation fascinante et multiforme entre
les noms et l’identité.
«Qu’y a-t-il dans un nom? Ce que nous appelons une rose embaumerait
autant sous un autre nom», dit Juliette à Roméo (ou Yael à Ram, selon une
traduction fin de siècle de l’hébreu moderne) dans une pièce du célèbre dra-
maturge que le leader libyen Muammar al-Kadhafi nomme «Cheikh Zubeir».
Il ya des cas dans lesquels le nom est extrêmement important en ce qu’il
détermine la façon dont les gens perçoivent la chose qu’elle représente. De
même que la pensée influence la langue, de même la langue peut façonner
la pensée. Voilà déjà 2500 ans, Confucius disait que la première chose qu’un
homme politique doit faire est de corriger les noms!

184

Zusammenfassung: Toponymik und Monopolstellung: ein Toponym, zwei
Ursprünge; die ideologische Hebräisierung von arabischen Ortsnamen in
der Sprache Isreals

Dieser Artikel analysiert Toponyme, die gleichzeitig mehr als ein Etymon
(etymologischen Ursprung) und damit Hybridität sowie mehrfache Ursprünge
besitzen. Spezielle Beachtung finden toponymische Neologismen, die das
Geographical Names Committee for the Hebraization of Arabic toponyms 1950-
1952 für das Gebiet der Negev-Wüste, dem südlichen Teil Israels, vorschlug.
Es trug damit zu einer Entwicklung einer bestimmten Typolgie onomasti-
scher Neologisierung im Allgemeinen und im toponomastischen Bereich im
Speziellen bei. Basierend auf Beispiele von Bemühungen Israels, sich selbst als
Nation zu konstruieren und zu definieren – es werden sowohl ausgesonderte
als auch durch angenommene lexikalische Entwicklungen in der jüdischen
Geschichte werden betrachtet – untersucht dieser Artikel das faszinierende und
vielgestaltige Verhältnis zwischen Bezeichnungen und Identität. “Was bedeutet
ein Name? Was wir eine Rose nennen, würde mit einem anderen Namen
genauso süß riechen“, sagt Julia zu Romeo (oder Yael zu Ram, wie in einer
fin-de-siècle-Übersetzung in „modernes Hebräisch) in einem Stück eines
berühmten Autors, auf den sich der libysche Führer Muammar al-Qaddafi als
“Sheikh Zubeir” bezieht. Es gibt Fälle, in denen ein Name äußerst bedeutsam
ist, weil er die Art und Weise bestimmt, wie Menschen die Sache verstehen,
für welche der Name steht. So wie die Gedanken Sprache beeinflussen, kann
die Sprache die Gedanken beeinflussen. Schon vor 2.500 Jahren sagte Konfu-
zius, dass die erste Pflicht eines Politikers sei, Namen zu korrigieren!

Ghil‘ad Zuckermann

Naming the evil one: onomastic strategies in Tolkien and Rowling

by Janet Croft

Túrin and Aragorn: Embracing and Evading Fate

by Janet Croft

Mythlore #113/114, Spring 2011

Aragorn and Túrin, among Tolkien’s heroes, represent opposing reactions to the forces of destiny: for Aragorn, a... more Aragorn and Túrin, among Tolkien’s heroes, represent opposing reactions to the forces of destiny: for Aragorn, a willing and eager acceptance of the decades of hard work it will take to become king, and for Túrin, an attempt to escape, by any means possible, the tragedy which always seems to dog his footsteps. Both characters are also notable for accumulating a great number of different names in the course of their careers. This is not merely a shallow coincidence; in Tolkien’s source literature, and especially in medieval romances and in folklore, names, name-changing, and namelessness are deeply meaningful, and we’ll look at how these meanings are embodied in Aragorn and Túrin.

New York placenames in film titles

by Jay Bernstein

Names 55 (2), June 2007

From 1914 to 2006, 396 feature films with titles containing New York placenames were released.  The pattern... more From 1914 to 2006, 396 feature films with titles containing New York placenames were released.  The pattern emerged during the silent era, peaked from the late 1920s to the early 1940s, and then dropped off steadily before rebounding beginning in the 1970s.  This article discusses the cinematic representation of New York as an "imagined city" and a cultural icon.  New York's associations in the popular imagination help explain the frequent occurrence of themes of negativity, violence, nightlife, and grandiosity (royalty or divinity) in these titles.  The use of New York placenames in titles creates guideposts in a socio-cognitive map of the city.