Neo-Aramaic Animal Names

Hezy Mutzafi

1. Aspects of Neo-Aramaic Animal Names in Scholarly Literature1

The topic of animal names in the field of Neo-Aramaic (NA) has hardly attracted any scholarly interest, nor is there any lexicological work dedicated to this topic. This is in contrast with the better investigated subject of some animal names in pre-modern Aramaic languages, the most noteworthy works in this respect being Löw’s comparative studies in Aramaic names of fishes, reptiles and amphibians (Löw 1906, 1909a, 1909b, 1912a, 1912b), and Talshir’s comparative work on animal names in the Samaritan Aramaic version of the Pentateuch (Talshir 1981). These works contain some references to NENA animal names mentioned in scholarly literature, primarily in Maclean’s dictionary of ‘vernacular Syriac’ (Maclean 1901). Additionally, some NA animal names inherited from older Semitic layers and attested in the literature are adduced in volume 2 of Semitic Etymological Dictionary by Militarev and Kogan (2005).

Various inherited and borrowed animal names in a large number of Neo-Aramaic varieties are attested in grammars, texts and especially dictionaries and glossaries pertaining to these varieties. Still, the inventory of NA animal names published to date remains partial, and some of these zoonyms did not receive accurate zoological definitions. Examples related to the former point, taken from the NENA dialects, are the following hitherto unattested animal names:2

Table 1: Hitherto unattested Neo-Aramaic animal names

The following are three examples of inaccurate definitions in the literature: In Maclean’s dictionary pašuwa is defined ‘foul smelling black centipede’ (Maclean 1901, 260a) instead of ‘(black) millipede’,7 yoša is defined ‘a large bird like a goose, inhabiting the lake shore’ (ibid., 118b) instead of simply ‘bustard’,8 and ṭoya is defined ‘deer’ (ibid., 109a) instead of ‘gazelle’.

Another problematic aspect related to Neo-Aramaic animal names in lexicological works concerns Classical Syriac animal names that have nothing to do with vernacular Aramaic and nonetheless occur in dictionaries from the 19th century and the first half of the 20th century. Syriac animal names in Maclean’s dictionary, such as—to take a few names of reptiles—ʾamaqta ‘gecko’ (Maclean 1901, 14b), yadyāda ‘chameleon’ (ibid., 94b; cf. Syr. yaḏyāḏa ‘millipede; hoopoe’) and patna ‘asp, adder’ (ibid., 261b), were imported into this dictionary from the C. Urmi translation of the Bible, in particular of the Hebrew Bible, which includes quite a few Classical Syriac zoonyms not used in colloquial speech.9 Some other animal names imported from the Urmi Bible into Maclean’s dictionary are qāqa ‘pelican’ (ibid., 284a), deṣa ‘wild goat’ (ibid., 65b), yaxmur, yaxmura ‘antelope, roebuck’ (ibid., 119a) and rema ‘wild ox, or unicorn’ (ibid., 293a).

These aforementioned classicisms, their sources and vernacular C. Urmi parallels, are presented in what follows:

Table 2: C. Urmi classicisms and vernacular parallels

These imports from the Urmi Bible are listed in Stoddard’s unpublished dictionary of ‘Modern Syriac’12 as well,13 and three of them, taken from Stoddard’s dictionary, are cited in Thesaurus Syriacus as ‘Neo-Syriac’ words.14

All these Syriac words are not marked in Maclean’s dictionary with an asterisk, which is the regular symbol in this work for marking ‘ecclesiastical or literary, but not colloquial [words]’ (Maclean 1901, xxii). There are, however, a few animal names in Maclean’s dictionary which do appear with an asterisk, including Syriac terms such as garsa ‘adder, basilisk’ (ibid., 57b) and xarmāna ‘adder’ (ibid., 106b), as well as Biblical Hebrew animal names copied intact, and independently of the Peshiṭtā, into the Urmi Neo-Aramaic Bible, such as xāġaw ‘type of locust or grasshopper’ (ibid., 92a; BH חָגָב, Peshiṭta ḥargālā) and ʿāġor ‘crane’ (ibid., 235a; BH עָגוּר ‘type of bird’, Peshiṭta snōnīṯā)

Oraham’s Dictionary is teeming with Classical Syriac words, which the author incorporated zealously as part of his policy of rendering his dictionary ‘enriched’. In Oraham’s dictionary ʾamaqta ‘lizard’ (Oraham 1943, 24b), yadyāda ‘hoopoe’ (ibid., 98b), pattāna (!) ‘asp’ (ibid., 422a), qāqa ‘pelican’ (ibid., 461a), dayṣa ‘ibex’ (ibid., 111b), yaxmur ‘fallow-deer, bubal’ (ibid., 202a) and rayma ‘buffalo, water buffalo; unicorn’ (ibid., 479b) are all classicisms, mostly copied from Payne Smith 1903.

Based on these dictionaries, one might be inclined to assume that the animal names ʾamaqta, yadyāda, patna, qāqa, deṣa/dayṣa yaxmur/yaxmura and rema/rayma are genuine modern Aramaic words that exist in C. Urmi or some other Christian NENA dialect(s), but no such vocables are known to occur in any modern Aramaic variety.15

2. Chronological Strata of Neo-Aramaic Animal Names

Neo-Aramaic animal names can be classified into three major chronological strata, starting with reflexes of the oldest names harking back to Proto-Aramaic, and in most cases to an earlier Semitic layer, if not Proto-Semitic, followed by terms inherited from a later Aramaic layer, mostly regional words, and ending in the layer of modern innovations and recent loanwords. Indeed, it seems that the entire lexical stock of any modern Aramaic variety can be chronologically stratified in this way. The following are selected examples of NA animal names in each of the three layers:

2.1. Oldest Stratum: Neo-Aramaic Vocables Inherited From Proto-Aramaic

Among the oldest inherited animal names are the ones within the first group shown in Table 3 below. All five selected pre-modern Aramaic lexical items have Semitic cognates which justify their classification as belonging to a Semitic chronological layer that pre-dated Proto-Aramaic. The first item, tawlʿā, tawlaʿtā, already attested in Old (Ancient) Aramaic as twlʿh (f. form in st. abs., see DNWSI, vol. 2, 1206), has reflexes in all four major NA dialect groups, as well as Semitic cognates such as Akk. tūltu, Harari tuluʾ, Soddo tǝlä, Soqotri taʿáleh and Mehri təwālōt.16 Likewise, the inherited Aramaic words for ‘dove’, ‘hare’, ‘gazelle’ and ‘ass foal’ and their cognates in other Semitic languages must be of ancient Semitic pedigree.17

Table 3: Common Aramaic animal names

As a matter of course, there are inherited Aramaic animal names that did not survive in every NA language or dialect. Thus, for instance, Ṭuroyo does not preserve the native name for ‘gazelle’, having replaced it with the Arabic loanword ġazāle, and Neo-Mandaic resorted to the phrase jihəl al-bəhimɔ ‘offspring of a donkey’ as the term for ‘ass foal’.

2.2. Later Stratum: Neo-Aramaic Vocables Inherited From Late Aramaic

The second layer involves NA animal names that are inherited from a later stage in the history of Aramaic, and cannot be ascribed to Proto-Aramaic. Their antecedents are either loanwords or late innovations. Most are not widely attested in Late Aramaic, but appear to be regional vocables, being confined to some Aramaic languages of either the eastern or western branch. Thus in the following examples, listed in Table 4.

Table 4: Region-specific animal names

(1) zāġā (cf. Syriac zāġā27 ‘chick of hen’, JBA זגא ‘cock’, post-cl. M zaga ‘cock’) is considered an Iranian loanword,28 and has reflexes in all major divisions of Eastern NA. The meaning ‘cock’ in Ṭuroyo and NM, as already in JBA and post-cl. M, may have evolved from *‘cockerel’. Indeed, in Bariṭle zāʾa is ‘chick of a hen; cockerel’, but it is unclear whether Bariṭle ‘cockerel’ exhibits an inherited meaning or an independent dialectal innovation. In some NENA dialects zāʾa (e.g. in Tisqopa and Telkepe) or zaʾa (e.g. in Karimlash) is ‘chick of a hen’, as in Syriac; whereas some other dialects evince semantic broadening, either to any chick (e.g. J. Zakho and Qaraqosh zāʾa), or even to the offspring of a bird or animal in general (e.g. as regards Ko d-Chalwe-Ṭyare zāʾa, Geramun zāya, C. Salmas +zāya).

(2) kurpā, of uncertain origin,29 is attested in Syriac, where it denotes ‘viper’—as is evident from the synonym ʾāḵeḏnā ‘viper’ and the Arabic gloss ʾafʿa(y) ‘ditto’ in medieval Syriac lexicons30— as well as some other kinds of snakes.31 The only known reflex in NENA is Hertevin kərpa, which preserves the meaning ‘viper’, whereas Ṭuroyo expanded the denotation of kərfo into a generic term for ‘snake’.32

(3) *māʾeṣ ʿezzē ‘lizard’, more precisely ‘monitor lizard’, lit. ‘goat sucker’, is in accordance with the emendation of Bar Bahlul’s māʾeṣ ʿērā ‘monitor lizard’, offered by Löw33 and, recently, Sokoloff.34 There can be little doubt that ʿērā is indeed corrupt and that this emendation is justified, given the following considerations:

(i) Bar Bahlul’s lexicon is replete with words derived from local Mesopotamian—quite possibly early NENA—vernaculars.35 Unlike ‘māʾeṣ ʿērā’, with the second component not related to any known Aramaic or foreign root or noun, *māʾeṣ ʿezzē, lit. ‘goat sucker’, is clearly the antecedent of NENA dialectal forms such as māṣəzze (Marga), maṣəzze (Ko d-Chalwe-Ṭyare), miẓaẓẓe (Bariṭle), māč̣əẓẓe (Geramun), all ‘lizard’ (genus Lacerta) and +mazuzta (C. Urmi) ‘lizard’ (generic).36 Synchronically more transparent forms, based on the same myth of lizards sucking milk from goats, are Mer mayṣa-ʾəzze and Barwar mɛṣa-ʾəzze37 ‘lizard’ (genus Lacerta), lit. ‘she sucks [milk from] goats’.38

(ii) The folk belief that monitor lizards suck milk from livestock, particularly cows, is already evident in the Babylonian Talmud (Shabbat 54b).39

(iii) The noun maṣuṣta (< *māṣōṣtā ‘sucker’), in all likelihood signifying ‘lizard’ or some kind of lizard), is manifest in a Mandaic incantation dated to the 5th-7th centuries (Abudraham and Morgenstern 2017, 757).

(iv) Syrian Ar. raḍḍāʿ il-maʿiz ‘salamander’, lit. ‘goat sucker’ (Behnstedt and Woidich 2010, 370a) may well be a calque on pre-mod. Aram. *māʾeṣ ʿezzē.40

(4) peqʿā ‘frog’ is attested in Bar ʿAli’s and Bar Bahlul’s Syriac lexicons of the 9th and 10th centuries,41 most probably as a regional vernacularism, possibly an early NENA word.42 Its etymology is uncertain, but it is likely related to Syr. paqʿā ‘noise, din, thunderbolt’, as well as the verbs paqqaʿ ‘make a noise of breaking, rattle, crackle’, ʾap̄qaʿ ‘make a noise’, in connection with noisy anuran croaks.43

Among the NENA reflexes of peqʿā are the dialectal cognates pəqʿa (Qaraqosh),44 pəqʾa (Hertevin), pəqqa (e.g. in Telkepe), p̭ək̭k̭a (C. Urmi),45 piqqa (e.g. in Tin), peqa (Mer), pəqa (e.g. in Harbole), pŭqa (Bariṭle), paqa (Inishke) and paqeʾṯa (Betanure), all denoting ‘frog, toad’. Betanure (northernmost Iraq) paqeʾṯa and NM (south-western Iran) paqettɔ ‘frog, toad’ appear to have each evolved independently as reflexes of *paqəʿṯā (< *paqʿəṯā < *peqʿəṯā), a feminine derivative of peqʿā.

(5) Trg.O. עורדען, JPA אורדען ,עורדעןand Sam.Aram. ארדען ,ערדען ‘frog’ exhibit an innovation whereby the forms *ʿurdʿā, ʾurdʿā (or rather their alternants in st. abs.)—the latter, ʾurdʿā, being attested in Syriac—were expanded by the ending -ān in these three Aramaic varieties of Palestine. Modern reflexes of the Western Aramaic innovation אורדען (or rather its alternant in st. emph.) are Maʿlula wurtaʿna and Jubbʿadin burṭaʿnṯa (< *wurtaʿnṯa).

A NA cognate is likely Midyat-Ṭur. gurdaʿdaʿ (informants), gurdaʿa (Ritter 1979, 180). Assuming that these forms represent a native Ṭuroyo word,46 its etymon would seem to be identical to Western Syriac ʾurdʿō ‘frog’, whence *wurdʿo (by partial assimilation of ʾ to u) > *gurdʿo (with a highly irregular change w > g) > gurdaʿa (with final a found in a small number of native nouns—see Tezel 2003, 32, 222) > partial reduplication: gurdaʿdaʿ.47 It is nevertheless only in WNA that the Western Aramaic form with -ān(ā) has modern reflexes.

(6) Ṭuroyo ṭabzo ‘badger’, used at least in the southern dialect of Ba-Dibbe, is most probably a reflex of ṭabzā ‘hyrax’, attested in JPA as טבזא alongside טפזא and טפסא (st. abs. טפס ,טפז ,טבז), which are cognate with Sam.Aram. טפסה (st. abs. טפס) ‘hyrax’.48 The earliest occurrences appear in Trg.O as טפזא and טבזא. Therefore, although Ṭuroyo is an Eastern NA language, it inherited a Western Aramaic word as a result of diffusion northward and eastward. Since the northernmost distribution of the hyrax is in Lebanon, the original meaning of the term ṭabzā could not have been preserved in Ṭuroyo, and the reflex ṭabzo came to refer to another chubby, short-limbed mammal, the badger.49

2.3. Latest Stratum: Modern Innovations

The latest stratum is that of Neo-Aramaic lexical innovations, many of which are new creations based on inherited Aramaic etyma moulded by mechanisms of word formation. Some of these innovations are highly imaginative and picturesque. Selected examples from NENA are furnished in what follows:

(1) As for some of the dialectal NENA terms for the ‘ladybird’, in Ishshi creative imagination forged the name tawərtət bābí-ʾalāha, lit. ‘cow of my Father God’, which has striking parallels in some of the Slavic languages, e.g. Polish boża krówka, lit. ‘God’s little cow’.50 These are outcomes of the same human imagination of this plump spotted creature as a tiny cow,51 that is considered to be a godsend for farmers by virtue of the fact that ladybirds mainly feed on aphids. In Harbole, however, the chubby ladybird was compared to a hen and the parallel term is ktɛtət bābí-ʾalāha ‘hen of my Father God’.52

Perhaps no less picturesque is Qaraqosh sustət ʾabuna,53 lit. ‘our priest’s mare’, which in some other C. NENA dialects designates the praying mantis (e.g. C. Aradhin sustət ʾabona, lit. ‘bishop’s mare’). C. Urmi ʾurxət +xalu is literally ‘way of uncle’, to be precise ‘the way to the maternal uncle’, and is based on a tradition of telling children that if they made this beetle fly, their uncle would come.54 ʾurxət +xalu may have also been influenced by Kurdish xalxalok ‘ladybird’, lit. ‘spotty’, which is based on the Kurdish noun xal (< Ar.) ‘birthmark, freckle’. ‘Spotty’ is also the basic meaning of baṭibāṭo in the Chamba d-Mallik dialect of Ṭyare and some other C. NENA dialects, derived from bəṭṭa ‘spot’ (cf. Syr. beṭṭā ‘spark’) or from a reduplicative form thereof, akin to Syr. baṭbāṭā ‘spark’.55

(2) As for NENA words for ‘snail’, in some Christian dialects (e.g. Ishshi, Telkepe and Ashitha) the snail is referred to as saṭāna, ‘Satan, devil’, which is a semantic parallel of Harbole šeda ‘demon; snail’, Jilu šida ‘snail’, Ṭur. šiḏo ‘Satan, devil; snail’ and Kurd. şeytanok ‘snail’, lit. ‘little devil’. Similarly, +ʾaynət šida ‘snail’, lit. ‘devil’s eye’ is listed in Maclean (1901, 238b) as a C. Urmi term, but, unknown to informants from the city of Urmi itself, is perhaps to be found in some village(s) in the vicinity, or has gone obsolete by now. Semantically related is šarro ‘snail’ in the Ṭyare dialect of Chamba d-Mallik, ultimately from Arabic šarr ‘wicked’.

The semantic background of these terms might be related to the snail’s eyestalks, which a fanciful mind may relate to the demonic horns of Satan. Indeed, in the Ṭyare dialect of Bne Belatha the snail is called qanānət saṭāna, lit. ‘Satan’s horns’.

By contrast, in Qaraqosh the snail has a positive name, nəṯyaṯtəd mar daniyel ‘Saint Daniel’s ear’, apparently referring to a Mesopotamian monk of the fifth century, Daniel the Stylite. Informants could offer no explanation as to the connection to that saint, but at least one can find a faint resemblance between a snail shell and the human ear.56

A rather neutral, yet no less picturesque name for ‘snail’ (and ‘snail shell’) is the C. Urmi term spaditət xuvva ~ spaditət xuvvə,57 lit. ‘snake’s pillow’. The surreal image of a sleepy snake using a snail shell as a pillow might have ultimately been taken from a folktale, but informants know of no such tale, nor could they offer any other background for this rather quaint term. It may well be that this term is a calque on some unattested Kurdish construction denoting ‘snake’s pillow’, given Kurmanji balif ‘pillow; snail’.58 This postulated Kurdish term would also be the model on which the term sariná-xiwá ‘snail’ (< sariná ‘pillow’ < Kurd. serîn + inherited NENA xiwá ‘snake’) was coined in the Jewish NENA dialect of Kerend.

(3) Some dialectal NENA innovations refer to new species of animals introduced into NENA-speaking areas, such as the guinea-fowl, more accurately the helmeted guinea-fowl, which was raised in some C. NENA-speaking villages for its meat and eggs. Telkepe kṯeṯət pərʿon ‘Pharaoh’s hen’ has a striking parallel in Italian, namely faraona, an ellipsis of gallina faraona ‘Pharaonic hen’.59 The connection to the Pharaohs is, presumably, the African origin of the bird and possibly the idea that it was one of the delicacies served to the rulers of ancient Egypt.

C. Urmi ctetət haštarxan ‘guinea-fowl’60 is a hen from Hashtar Khan, which is one of the old names of Astrakhan near the Caspian Sea (I could not find any information about guinea-fowl breeding in Astrakhan, though). Lizin-Ṭyare məštarxa must be an ellipsis of *kṯɛša mən ʾǝštarxan ‘hen from Astrakhan’, especially in the light of Chamba d-Mallik-Ṭyare ʾǝštarxǝn ~ kṯɛšǝt ʾǝštarxǝn ‘guinea-fowl’. The innovation in Bne Romta-Ṭyare kṯɛšət qāna ‘hen of horn, horned hen’ is after the fowl’s horn-like protrusion.

Numerous other dialectal NENA innovations of animal names could be added to the terms above, among which are Bne Belatha-Ṭyare čale-miya ‘water-bride’ and Harbole xasla-mǝṭre ‘weaner of rains’ as unique names for the salamander (the latter term, xasla-mǝṭre, is related to the appearance of [full-grown] salamanders in May and early June, when rainfall ceases).

3. Semantic Differences in Dialectal Cognates of Animal Names

In some cases the same animal name refers to different referents across specific NA varieties. Selected cases taken from the NENA dialects are the following:

Invertebrates

Birds

Reptiles

Mammals

Birds, Insects

(1) Pre-mod. Aram. naddālā ‘centipede’, as, e.g., in Syriac, has reflexes in various C .NENA dialects, mostly referring to the centipede or millipede, such as Lizin-Ṭyare madāla ‘centipede’,61 Barwar madāla ‘millipede’ (Khan 2008, vol. 2, 1324), Bne Romta-Ṭyare nadāla ‘centipede, millipede’, Sat medāla ‘id.’. Some other Christian NENA dialects and cognates evince a semantic shift to another elongated creeping invertebrate, the earthworm. Thus, e.g., Shwawwa-Baz madāla, Timur and Upper Barwar (Hakkâri) midāla. In the dialect of Geramun madāla signifies both ‘centipede, millipede’ and ‘earthworm’.

(2) Some of the north-western NENA dialects in the area of Bohtan preserve an inherited NENA word for ‘cock, rooster’ closely related to Syr. bakkā ‘cock’, a by-form of ʾāḇakkā (also אבכא ‘id.’ in the Judaeo-Syriac Targum to Proverbs 30.31).62 Thus buka in Borb-Ruma and Hertevin and büka in Qurich, stemming from the antecedent *bukkā. In Qaraqosh buka exhibits a semantic change into ‘male dove’.

(3) Various C. NENA dialects exhibit the zoonym šəlya ‘viper’, e.g. Haṣṣan, C. Aradhin, Iṣṣin, the dialect cluster of Ṭyare and Sharmen. In all these dialects šəlya is a feminine noun. I postulate the etymon *šālyā, a fs. participle of the pre-modern Aramaic verbal root šly ‘to draw, pull out’, hence šəlya is a snake that ‘draws’ its fangs and bites. The connection between šly ‘to draw, pull out’ and a venomous snake is attested in JPA: שדיי שלח לחוויה דאשלי לארס ‘God sent the snake, which drew out the venom.’ (DJPA 553a, s.v. 2שלי). For the vowel change *a > ə in *šālyā >*šalya >šəlya compare ləxma, ləxmá ‘bread’ in some NENA varieties (e.g. Ṭyare and Arbel, respectively).

In the NENA dialect of Tilla the denotation of šəlya was expanded to include any snake, followed by the ousting of inherited NENA xuwwe ‘snake’ out of the dialect’s lexical system.63

(4) Ṭyare kakəšta ‘weasel’ is etymologically related to JBA כרכושתא ‘weasel’ and Syr. kāḵuštā ‘weasel, ferret, mongoose, cat’ (*‘weasel’ > ‘mice-eating mammal’), among other cognates. The antecedent of the Ṭyare form appears to have been *kakkeštā, closely akin to *kakkuštā, the postulated precursor of the JBA cognate. Another cognate form is kākšā ‘weasel’ in a late Nestorian manuscript.64 In the light of C. Salmas and Van kakša ‘weasel’ and the fact that this manuscript includes a number of NENA vocables,65 kākšā is likely an interpolation of a NENA word into that Syriac text. In addition, Jilu kakša evinces a change of meaning into another small, short-legged, agile mammal, the vole.66

Further cognates are kakča ‘mole, rat’ (Maclean 1901, 131b), kaška ‘field mouse’ (Tsereteli 1980, 44) and ‘mole’ (David 1924, English-NA part, 64). All these pre-modern and modern cognates might hark back to Akkadian kakkišu, which appears to have denoted ‘weasel’,67 in which case the form closest to the etymon is modern kakša (< *kakkəšā) rather than the pre-modern cognates.

(5) Oddly enough, in Ṭyare qašonik̭a is a term for two entirely different creatures according to dialect, denoting ‘tit’ (a songbird) in Lizin and ‘antlion’ in Bne romta. Informants construe the literal meaning of this word as ‘little priest’. Indeed, qašonik̭a is synchronically, and probably also etymologically, based on inherited NENA qāša (consider Syriac qaššā < qaššīšā) ‘priest’ with two diminutive suffixes, native -on and ik̭a. The latter is based on the Kurdish diminutive suffix ik. The connection to ‘priest’ eludes me, however, and is completely opaque as far as the speakers are concerned.

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