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ArchivesRe: meaning
in reply to a message by nineveh
This is what I posted a long time ago:
NINIVEH
I looked up Niniveh in several dictionaries and this is what I found:
The Assyrian form of the name is „ninua“, meaning
a) settlement
b) residence of the son
c) residence of Nino
Now Nino was one of the mythical founders of the Assyrian-Babylonian empire, husband of Semiramis. According to some sources, Semiramis ordered to build the hanging gardens of Babylon. This is probably not true – if those gardens, one of the seven wonders of the world, existed at all. But the lady seems to have existed.
The name Nino is said to be a derivation of the Sumeric name NINA, which was a name of the goddess Ishtar. She went by the sign of the fish (but there seems to be no connection to the Hebrew word „nun“ meaning „fish“ > our letter N). The meaning of her name is said to be „goddess, mistress“, but I can’t back up any of this.
NINIVEH
I looked up Niniveh in several dictionaries and this is what I found:
The Assyrian form of the name is „ninua“, meaning
a) settlement
b) residence of the son
c) residence of Nino
Now Nino was one of the mythical founders of the Assyrian-Babylonian empire, husband of Semiramis. According to some sources, Semiramis ordered to build the hanging gardens of Babylon. This is probably not true – if those gardens, one of the seven wonders of the world, existed at all. But the lady seems to have existed.
The name Nino is said to be a derivation of the Sumeric name NINA, which was a name of the goddess Ishtar. She went by the sign of the fish (but there seems to be no connection to the Hebrew word „nun“ meaning „fish“ > our letter N). The meaning of her name is said to be „goddess, mistress“, but I can’t back up any of this.
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Replies
No connection is far more difficult to establish than finding evidence of connection. In this case, we know that word-initial nasals and reduplications have very curious distribution in world's languages which are difficult to explain away as borrowing or sound symbolism, yet occur in groups of languages which are very hard to relate.
The semantic relationship between fish and shining may also repeat in unrelated situations, though less work exists on that.
So, `seems' to be no connection is probably the closest we will get to in some time.
The semantic relationship between fish and shining may also repeat in unrelated situations, though less work exists on that.
So, `seems' to be no connection is probably the closest we will get to in some time.
1