Sunday, December 10, 2017

Jerusalem's suppletive gentilic






Whygh said...

Could Bayt al-Maqdis be formed after the mishnaic name for the temple, בֵּית הַמִּקְדָּשׁ bēiṯ hammiqdāš?

Gale Cowan said...

(This is John Cowan using my wife's computer.)

Until the mid-20C, the demonym Dorpian was used for Poughkeepsie, N.Y., from Dutch dorp 'village'.

Lameen Souag الأمين سواق said...

Whygh: Clearly there is a connection, although the paucity of documentation of pre-Islamic Arabic makes it difficult to figure out the exact pathway.

John: That is a wonderful example. (If you ask me, "Dorpian" should be revived.) And it's probably no coincidence that we find such a case in one of the first regions of the US to be settled, rather than in, say, Montana.

Alexander said...

In contemporary Persian, قدس and بیت‌المقدس are both used for Jerusalem, but the latter is pronounced 'beytolmoqaddas'. This is probably because the history you describe here is unknown in Iran, such that the unfamiliar reading 'maqdes' is elided by the more familiar 'moqaddas' (which is a common word for "holy" in Persian).

Lameen Souag الأمين سواق said...

Interesting. Even in Arabic, "Muqaddasi" is attested as an archaic alternative to "Maqdisi", so it may well be that this alternative reading has an older history.