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ArchivesRe: Female Name: Anaya or derivation Annaya
in reply to a message by D Bingham
Ooh ... an additional Latin meaning! Wowee. May we be permitted to know what this mysterious meaning is?
Incidentally, Ibo is a Nigerian language, so if Ibo and the Arabic spoken in Nigeria have the same meaning for Anaya, or for any word or name, is this not a borrowing rather than two separate words existing independently?
Incidentally, Ibo is a Nigerian language, so if Ibo and the Arabic spoken in Nigeria have the same meaning for Anaya, or for any word or name, is this not a borrowing rather than two separate words existing independently?
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You are obviously right about borrowings in general, but a few words having similar sound *and* meaning is expected in any two languages. The class of words where this happens commonly are onomatopoeic or similar imitational (e.g. babies first sounds) ones. In addition, given that our pattern finding brains lumps together as similar rather large semantic and phonetic regions, not a single match by chance is actually rather *unlikely*. A highly contested theory also proposes a core of a handful of words whose pronunciation may be similar due to shared almost infinitely deep ancestry: and really ancient borrowings may not be so easily distinguishable either.
Sorry to be a pedant: when it comes to names, people's creative efforts are, as you indicated, far simpler explanations than comparative linguistic ruminations. But, you did say *any* word, so I took a chance to digress.
Sorry to be a pedant: when it comes to names, people's creative efforts are, as you indicated, far simpler explanations than comparative linguistic ruminations. But, you did say *any* word, so I took a chance to digress.
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Oh no, you're absolutely right! Parents are mama, dada etc all over the world, after all. Given the human larynx, there must be considerable overlap, usually pretty random: when I was a student someone told our Classics professor that an Inuit language and one of our South African indigenous languages have the same word for "house"; he took this as a sign that the languages were related, and she briskly said that if it proved anything, it was that they were not. Silence fell ...
It's actually remarkable that there are so few instances of something meaning, say, "pretty fairy of the forest floor" in language A also meaning "hole in the ground for personal hygiene" in language B. Remarkable, and lucky.
It's actually remarkable that there are so few instances of something meaning, say, "pretty fairy of the forest floor" in language A also meaning "hole in the ground for personal hygiene" in language B. Remarkable, and lucky.
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