america

While there are those who believe that perhaps the Phoenicians discovered the New World, I don't think anyone thinks they came up with the name America. Yet perhaps, just perhaps, there might be a Semitic connection to the name.

Many years ago, I wrote to the columnist Cecil Adams:

We all know that America was named for Amerigo Vespucci. What does Amerigo mean in Italian?

He replied that:

Since you asked, there are a couple of theories on the name's origin. One is that it is a variant of Enrico, the Italian form of Henry, and derives from the Old German Haimirich (in later German Emmerich, in English Americus), from haimi, home, plus ric, power, ruler. Alternatively, it may come from the old German Amalricus, from amal, work, plus ric. (Amalricus the foreman? Beats me.)

Amal means work in Old German? It means the same in Hebrew! However, I have never been able to find any connection, or even an etymology of the German amal (perhaps to an earlier Indo-European root.) Maybe a reader knows or can find something out?

In any case, besides meaning "work, labor", the Hebrew word עמל amal, has a number of different meanings in many various locations in the Bible. Its meanings include: wealth, sin, suffering, trouble, oppression, mischief and pain. I have not found one unifying theory that explains all appearances of the word. It will often have different meanings in the same book. (See Robert Gordis, "On the Meaning of עמל in Koheleth" in Koheleth - The Man and His World, page 418).

In Arabic, the related words amil and amala mean "he did, acted". In Medieval Hebrew we first see the word amil עמיל - "agent, broker" from the Arabic. As far as I know, this word is not used much today, but in Modern Hebrew we find that the Arabic amala has been adopted into Hebrew - עמלה - as "commission, fee". This I hear all the time, especially at the bank...

Another derivative is ta'amula תעמולה - "propaganda". According to Klein, this word is also from the Arabic amil (business representative, agent.) Ta'amula has somewhat of a negative connotation, and therefore often it will be someone else's ta'amula, but your hasbara הסברה - "explanation, advocacy". That's what we need in America these days...

africa

One of the theories as to the origin of the name of the continent Africa is from the Phoenician afar, which is identical to the Hebrew עפר. It will often be translated as "dust", but can also refer to "earth" or "soil". According to Take Our Word For It:

The -ica ending in those words comes from Latin -icus/-ica, and the Romans got that suffix from Greek -ikos, as in such words as komikos, grammatikos, and poetikos. The suffix -ikos was apparently one of the most frequently used in Greek, and it formed adjectives, making poetikos mean "in the manner of a poet". In general, -ikos meant "in the manner of", "pertaining to", or "of". Therefore, Africa, which came from Latin Africus, meant "of the Afro", the Afro being an ancient people of North Africa. Adrian Room, in Placenames of the World, suggests that Afro applied to the people of what is now Tunisia, and that the term derives from Arabic afar meaning "dust, earth", so that the Afro were etymologically "people of the desert".

I think that the authors are likely mistaken when they ascribe the origin to Arabic - I haven't seen that mentioned anywhere else.

Another meaning of afar is ashes. A word with similar sound and meaning is efer אפר, also "ashes". Klein writes:

According to Zimmern [Heinrich?], אפר is possibly a loan word from Akka. epiru(=earth, dust), hence properly identical with עפר (=dust).

Both efer and afar give root to the same color as well - עפור and אפור - afor, meaning gray. According to Steinberg, the gray color is where the Hebrew word for lead - עופרת oferet, gets its name.

When the founders of Modern Hebrew were looking for a word for "pencil" they looked at the European words bleistift (German) and mine de plomb (French) - both deriving from the original material used - lead. On this basis they (Ben Yehuda according to Stahl, Klausner according to Klein) coined the Hebrew word for pencil - iparon עפרון. I doubt either Ben Yehuda or Klausner would anticipate the urban legend known as Ani Iparon (quoted here, scroll down, and view the comments for more references.)

I have not seen anyone make a connection between afar and ofer עופר - meaning "young deer". The etymology of the town Ofra עופרה is also not clear - perhaps from one of the roots mentioned above. The Daat Mikra explains that the Arabs renamed Ofra as Taibe (from tov, good) because ofra means a demon in Arabic.

One name that certainly is not connected to afar is Oprah - as in Oprah Winfrey. She was given the name Orpah (Rut's sister-in-law) but it was mispronounced as Oprah, and the name stuck. So while the talk-show host may have her origins in Africa, her name and the continent's are not related.

asia

Previously, we discussed the etymology of Europe, and how it gets its name from erev ערב - which means "to enter", based on the idea that the sun enters its "tent" in the evening. Well, the same concept may lead to the name of Asia as well.

According to Klein (and others) the name Asia derives from the Akkadian asu, which is cognate to the Hebrew yatza יצא, and means "to go out". So just as the sun enters its tent at sunset, it goes out of it at sunrise. And so Asia can mean "the Region of the Rising Sun".

Yatza is a very simple Hebrew root, and is one of the first verbs learned by children. Some of its derivatives include tzetza צאצא - descendant, and totza'ah תוצאה - result.

Unlike the connection between erev and maarav מערב - west, which is used until today, yatza is not associated with a word for east in either biblical or later Hebrew. The two terms used in the Bible are קדם kedem and מזרח mizrach.

Kedem, which is not used in Modern Hebrew, means forward or front. For those of us accustomed to seeing maps with north on top, it sounds strange to have east be in front. But as the English word "orient" attests, finding one's bearings was done when facing east.

Mizrach comes from זרח - "to shine, to rise", and of course is connected to the sun rising in the east. The Religious Zionist movement Mizrachi is actually an acronym for merkaz ruchani מרכז רוחני - Spiritual Center. However, certainly the name was also chosen for its association with the direction mizrach, which for centuries had been identified with the Land of Israel (even when most Eastern European Jews lived more north than west of it...)

europe

In our discussion about erev, we discussed how one original meaning was "to enter", and the place where the sun enters in the evening is maarav - west. Not surprisingly, compass directions feature prominently in many place names - North Dakota, South Africa, East Timor and West Indies.

The Hebrew word for west מערב becomes magrib in Arabic. (The "g" switch for ayin is common in Semitic languages - e.g. Gaza for Aza, Gomorrah for Amora.) That is the source of the name of the region of Western Africa known as the Maghreb. The most Western of these countries is Morocco. Morocco gets its name from the city Marakesh. The native name "Al Maghreb al Aqsa", means "the Farthest West".

As we saw in the history of the names Gibraltar and Spain, the Phoenicians and other ancient Semitic peoples preceded the Arabs in giving Semitic place names in the Mediterranean area. Klein, along with many others, states that the name of the continent Europe derives from the Akkadian erebu, which is cognate to the Hebrew erev. Klein writes:

Accordingly Europe orig. meant 'the Region of the Setting Sun'. cp. Hesychius who renders Europe with the words chora tes duseos (=the Land of the Setting Sun.) cp. also Erbos (= place of nether darkness), which derives from Heb. ערב.

We'll take a look at the Semitic origins of the names of other continents in the posts to come.