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ArchivesRe: Origin of Tanveer
in reply to a message by ajay rawat
I'd guess it was originally Arabic - a lot of Indian and Pakistani names are Arabic in origin because of Arabic settlement in those countries (and a major invasion of Pakistan in the 8th century). Everything I could find on Tanveer/Tanvir/Tanweer said it was Arabic and meant 'rays of light'. I can't search in Hindi though! - so maybe someone else can?
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What do you want to search? You can google on तनवीर, but you are likely to find a lot of pages on Habib Tanveer where Tanveer is a pen name probably from Arabic.
The name is used in Punjab in India by Hindus and Sikhs as well, and in that region names are very often unisex and reinterpreted freely. I have definitely seen people who interpret tanveer as tan (from Sanskrit tanu, body/beautiful body ultimately possibly from tan, to spread through thin as in wispy smoke to a nubile female body) with veer (from Sanskrit vIra, brave cognate with English virile). For personal names, meaning is a dubious concept: one can talk of etymology, and it is very likely that the etymology is Arabic as the poster correctly states.
A subtle unrelated point, by the way: it is anachronistic to call the 8th century Arabic conquest of Sindh/Multan region as a major invasion of Pakistan. There is little evidence of Pakistan as a conceptual entity before the invasion, and what the invasion did was give Islam a toehold in the subcontinent, which foretold a lot of important events of the next thousand years; it brought this region into the Islamic fold, but that is very different than invading Pakistan. The concept of a nation was pretty inconsistent with the Islamic ideology of this period, and one can argue that the nations in this region arose as nations only in the 20th century. (The name Pakistan is new, but that is irrelevant to what I am saying.)
Also, the Arabic influence in India is most importantly carried by Turk and Afghan political/trade/travel/invasion ties, not so much by Arabic settlements. The linguistic influence is, therefore, as much Farsi (Indo-european) as Arabic (semitic).
The name is used in Punjab in India by Hindus and Sikhs as well, and in that region names are very often unisex and reinterpreted freely. I have definitely seen people who interpret tanveer as tan (from Sanskrit tanu, body/beautiful body ultimately possibly from tan, to spread through thin as in wispy smoke to a nubile female body) with veer (from Sanskrit vIra, brave cognate with English virile). For personal names, meaning is a dubious concept: one can talk of etymology, and it is very likely that the etymology is Arabic as the poster correctly states.
A subtle unrelated point, by the way: it is anachronistic to call the 8th century Arabic conquest of Sindh/Multan region as a major invasion of Pakistan. There is little evidence of Pakistan as a conceptual entity before the invasion, and what the invasion did was give Islam a toehold in the subcontinent, which foretold a lot of important events of the next thousand years; it brought this region into the Islamic fold, but that is very different than invading Pakistan. The concept of a nation was pretty inconsistent with the Islamic ideology of this period, and one can argue that the nations in this region arose as nations only in the 20th century. (The name Pakistan is new, but that is irrelevant to what I am saying.)
Also, the Arabic influence in India is most importantly carried by Turk and Afghan political/trade/travel/invasion ties, not so much by Arabic settlements. The linguistic influence is, therefore, as much Farsi (Indo-european) as Arabic (semitic).
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