Re: Language naming terminology

At 8:57 pm -0400 22/9/98, Steg Belsky wrote:
>On Mon, 21 Sep 1998 23:49:25 +0200 vardi <vardi@...> writes:
[.....]
>>Hebrew, by the way, likes to draw on Biblical words to name
>>appropriate
>>countries, leading to Sefarad = Spain, Tsarfat = France.  I get
>>Turkish
>>cable tv here in Israel, and on the news maps of Europe show some
>>fascinating names (Bulgaristan = Bulgaria, Yunanistan = Greece (cf
>>Arabic yunan = Greece, Hebrew: yavan) and a name for Albania I can't
>>recognize or remember).
>
>Yavan is also a biblical name....one of Yefet's descendents if i remember
>correctly.
But like the Arabic 'Yunan' is almost certainly derived from the same
ancient Greek source as 'Ionian', 'Ionic' &c.  The Ionian Greeks were
amongst the earliest of the Greek settlers in Asia Minor & were the most
dominant Group there.  This is IMO one of those instances where I agree
with Tom about the name of the nearest branch, 'tribe' or whatever, of a
people being adopted and then used generally of the whole people.

Ray.