This is a reply within a larger thread: view the whole thread

Re: Nilus
in reply to a message by Magia
Wow, strange that they gave it a Babylonian name and not an Egyptian one! lol
vote up1vote down

Replies

Nilus doesn't mean 'river' in general, though - it's just the name of that specific river, or more likely the god of that specific river. And where his name came from is not clear to me ... the Egyptians had other explanations for the Nile and its flooding ... the Romans were the great specialists at river gods. But in Latin a river was: flumen.
vote up1vote down
According to my analysis of my cooperative linguistics: old Babylonian,old Hebrew & old Egyptian were either dialects or by and large regionally closely related languages, 'no way they can't share words and names. Arabic was formed from these languages.
Fastforward, the name "Nile" was a frequent word used by the so called nilotic people, they were named by the Greek as such. In my language "northern Sesotho, south Africa, when it has rained, for example, I will say "pula e nele", in all regional languages we used similar word but slightly different. Zulus will say "imvula ya neta", Venda tribe will say "mvura ya nesa" , they sound similar to me because I speak the language as my mother tongue, I will tell if any word on earth took from my language or we took from their language.
Fastforward, the name "Nile" is nilotic named as such by the Greeks, the nilotic were praising rain frequently using the word that "pula" has rained, at the banks of the river and the Greeks labelled them as such and the river as such. "My contribution"
vote up0vote down