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Suri
The daughter of Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes, who seem to be actors, has been named Suri. On the BBC website I found:"The baby's name, Suri, came from Hebrew, meaning "princess" or in Persian, meaning "red rose", the statement said."This seems improbable, since Persian is an IE language to my knowledge and Hebrew obviously Semitic. Suri could perhaps be a distorted version of Sarah ... but the red rose defeats me! Any ideas?
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Suri is a pet form of Sura, which is a Yiddish form of Sarah.
Tsuri means "my rock" in Hebrew.
~~ Claire ~~
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according to my farsi-english dictionary, the proper name for rose is gul surkh: gaf-lam seen-reh-kheh. it could just be a corruption of that.
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Here is a discussion of Suri I found put up on an Iranian culture site. The author at least seems to me to probably be knowing what he's talking about:http://www.iranian.ws/iran_news/publish/article_15022.shtml
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I'm not sure the Persian derivation is "nonsense". The Complete Book of Muslim and Parsi Names by Maneka Gandhi and Ozair Husain lists Sûrî as a Persian name meaning "beautiful red rose". Perhaps "gul" is the generic word for "rose" in Farsi, and sûrî is the name for a particular variety, or perhaps we just have a case of synonyms in the same language, as with "flower" and "blossom" in English.
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Indeed one should be carefulI do not know any Persian, but I believe سوری is a Persian word...That is Arabic seen-waw-reh-farsi_yeh (the last can be replaced by alef_maksura, I believe) if you can't read the unicode...which means something red. I think it alone can mean red rose, but it may be a shortening of گلسورى (gaf-lam-seen-waw-reh-alef_maksura) for that. There is also a connection with feasting, but now I have reached the end of my ability to even parse the online dictionary!In any case, it is an Indian name of Persian origin: the most famous holder of the name was Sher Shah Suri. However, in India, it is also of Sanskrit origin from a root sUra/sUrya etc. meaning the sun, and ultimately from svar symbolizing day/light/sun/sky cognate to Greek Helios and Latin Sol. I don't think I have heard it as a given name in India, though.
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I read an article saying that Suri was Hewbrew for princess as well. I was a bit confused, because my name is Sarah also Hewbrew for princess. It could be a variant, it seems possible. But it sounds more of an Asian name to me rather than a Hewbrew one. (It reminds me of Sayuri from Memoirs of a Geisha. But that's just me.)I'd really like to know what Suri really means though as well.
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Suri *could* be a weird corruption of Sarah. The Hebrew Letters site does list it as a variant of Sarah, but that website is only halfway reliable. http://www.hebrewletters.com/item.cfm?itemid=758The Persian meaning is clearly nonsense, though - the Persian for 'rose' is Gul (also seen in Gulbahar, Gulistan and Gulzar)A Google search for Suri shows that it's also an Indian surname (I've seen Manil Suri, Neeraj Suri, Rajan Suri, Sanjay Suri etc) and a breed of Alpaca (oops!). There's a male British actor with the first name Suri.All in all, it's an odd name they've heard somewhere and decided to use, and no doubt the two meanings they've pulled out of thin air will be all over the Baybee Naym boards before the week is out!
ChrisellAll we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us. - J.R.R. Tolkien.

This message was edited 4/19/2006, 4:20 AM

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It is most likely derived from the French "souris" !
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Ah, souris - it's French for Minnie, right?
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