Re: Same name (was Re: Brithenig-heads)

At 03:42 PM 4/13/2000, Dan Sulani wrote:
>On 13 April Steg wrote:
> >On Wed, 12 Apr 2000 20:43:41 +0200 BP Jonsson <bpj@...> writes:
> >> Would anyone (read: Steg :-)  know the original form & meaning of
> >> Elizabeth.  IIRC its Russian counterpart has /s/, not /z/.  True?
AFAIK the spelling in most European languages has <s>, including British
English, but not American English. OTOH the British pronunciation uses /s/
just like the American, right?

> >All i can think of is _elisheva`_, which means something like "my god
> >swears/has_sworn/will_swear" from what i can tell.
>
>Good thinking, Steg. My  English dictionary
>  (Webster's New World , 1957 [you'd think it was time already
>to get a new one! :-) ])
>has the following derivation of "Elizabeth":
>  (L = Latin, Heb = Hebrew  lit = literally)
>     "L. Elisabeth; Heb. elisheba' , lit., God is (my) oath"
I guess this would go well with Isabel, which my classicist friend tells me
is thought to POSSIBLY be a Punic (Carthaginian) name meaning "oath of
Ba`al." As for the question of the `ayin->tau, I know that certain
pharyngeal sounds had pretty strange outcomes in Aramaic. I don't remember
the exact details offhand, but I'm pretty sure some instances of tzade in
Aramaic correspond to `ayin in Hebrew.

Eric Christopherson / *Aiworegs Ghristobhorosyo