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ArchivesRe: meaning and or origin
in reply to a message by RISHICAH
Difficult ... from the story I guess that your family is not from India, so one has to figure out what Indian word is being pronounced as Rishicah. In addition to that one would have to know which Indian language she was talking about. I will go by guessing, and will probably be completely incorrect in doing so.
The ancient Indian holy text called the Rgvedas is comprised of couplets called Rc which are apparently `seen' (probably metaphorically) by wise men who were called Rishi. In Sanskrit, there is a root RS, probably related to a word for sight, which means to sing such couplets, and RSi is probably from that. In any case RSi in the sense of wise and noble men has cognates in Irish arsan and arrach.
RSika is a diminutive: a small or less important RSi, and RSikA is the feminine form, usually the wife (but maybe the wise lady herself) or a river by which a RSi lives etc. Pronounced as R as a vowel itself (try saying RRRRRRRRRRRRRng, and shorten the RRRRRR to a short vowel), S as a retroflex (tounge rolled to say hard T, and then saying S instead), short i, k as in English, and A as in car.
The problem is that h at the end of the name: Sanskrit grammar does not allow that h. In fact the h following the feminine context A makes the whole thing a plural: and it would mean something like the people who are RSikA or something like that. That part, I would, therefore, have to attribute to pronounciation differences that I cannot reconstruct.
The ancient Indian holy text called the Rgvedas is comprised of couplets called Rc which are apparently `seen' (probably metaphorically) by wise men who were called Rishi. In Sanskrit, there is a root RS, probably related to a word for sight, which means to sing such couplets, and RSi is probably from that. In any case RSi in the sense of wise and noble men has cognates in Irish arsan and arrach.
RSika is a diminutive: a small or less important RSi, and RSikA is the feminine form, usually the wife (but maybe the wise lady herself) or a river by which a RSi lives etc. Pronounced as R as a vowel itself (try saying RRRRRRRRRRRRRng, and shorten the RRRRRR to a short vowel), S as a retroflex (tounge rolled to say hard T, and then saying S instead), short i, k as in English, and A as in car.
The problem is that h at the end of the name: Sanskrit grammar does not allow that h. In fact the h following the feminine context A makes the whole thing a plural: and it would mean something like the people who are RSikA or something like that. That part, I would, therefore, have to attribute to pronounciation differences that I cannot reconstruct.
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