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Help[Facts] Re: Nisanthi
in reply to a message by Minikui
Nisanthi and Nishanthi are very likely to be variant spellings: Indians are not terribly consistent in transliterating the sibilants. Or they could be related names in different Indian languages which often differ in their pronounciation. In this case, looking at the last names that Google comes up with, I think the name is rare in geographical India, but comes from other localities where culturally Indian people have resided for a long time.
I do not know enough about the languages involved to deduce the meaning. However, it is difficult to relate it to the nishAnta (the ending -a is silent in many modern Indian languages) that appears on this site, since that comes from nish (night, probably cognate with it) + suffix A (does not change meaning) + anta (meaning and cognate with end), and the -i cannot appear there grammatically except for any possible phonological pattern in the language it comes from.
shAnti is a better place to start: it arises from sham (with cognates in Greek) meaning to toil and fatigue and finally stop, rest, and be calm, but the word shAnti just picked up the meaning calm out of that.
Prefixes like ni (which is cognate with parts of the English words nether and beneath and means down, back, or is used pick out the vaguely negative out of the possible senses) specialize the meaning of the verb they are attached to. In the particular case of sham, ni-sham actually means to perceive, hear etc., but can also mean to be calm. There is actually a different word nishAnta which does mean calm (and far related things like customary, dwelling place, harem, etc.; its an old word and meanings develop over time) and I am not at all sure that the name nishAnta does not come from this instead of the meaning given at this site, and grammatically nishAnti can mean tranquility, just like shAnti.
Incidentally, the -t- -th- bit is a transliteration question: one can use the -h to soften in the sense of aspiration, or in the sense of dental. In this case, one wants the dental unaspirated consonant.
Incidentally, the Devanagari spelling of shAnti on this site is incorrect: the last i should be the short one: शान्ति or शांति are both standard, but not the one given here.
I do not know enough about the languages involved to deduce the meaning. However, it is difficult to relate it to the nishAnta (the ending -a is silent in many modern Indian languages) that appears on this site, since that comes from nish (night, probably cognate with it) + suffix A (does not change meaning) + anta (meaning and cognate with end), and the -i cannot appear there grammatically except for any possible phonological pattern in the language it comes from.
shAnti is a better place to start: it arises from sham (with cognates in Greek) meaning to toil and fatigue and finally stop, rest, and be calm, but the word shAnti just picked up the meaning calm out of that.
Prefixes like ni (which is cognate with parts of the English words nether and beneath and means down, back, or is used pick out the vaguely negative out of the possible senses) specialize the meaning of the verb they are attached to. In the particular case of sham, ni-sham actually means to perceive, hear etc., but can also mean to be calm. There is actually a different word nishAnta which does mean calm (and far related things like customary, dwelling place, harem, etc.; its an old word and meanings develop over time) and I am not at all sure that the name nishAnta does not come from this instead of the meaning given at this site, and grammatically nishAnti can mean tranquility, just like shAnti.
Incidentally, the -t- -th- bit is a transliteration question: one can use the -h to soften in the sense of aspiration, or in the sense of dental. In this case, one wants the dental unaspirated consonant.
Incidentally, the Devanagari spelling of shAnti on this site is incorrect: the last i should be the short one: शान्ति or शांति are both standard, but not the one given here.
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