Sunday, June 14, 2009

On the Name Marqe

A suggestion by Moshe Florentin. The reason that names from Greek and Latin have the suffix [e] in Samaritan Aramaic as in Marqe T.ût.e and others is that the they were taken over in the form of the vocative case. I think would explain some of the Jewish Aramaic forms. I can think of an analogy. The name Hamish has been borrowed into English in the vocative form. Hamish (proper Gaelic spelling Shéamais) is the vocative case of Seamus (proper Gaelic spelling Séamas) meaning James = Jacob. You might well wonder about the forms.

The masculine vocative case ending is [e] in both Greek and Latin. The nominative case ending is [os] in Greek and [us] in Latin.
In modern Greek a final [s] remains in most dialects but not all. Markos is still Markos.


Email stephan.h.huller@gmail.com with comments or questions.


 
Stephan Huller's Observations by Stephan Huller
is licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 United States License.