Toponomastics

Toponomastics: the study of place names.

Author: Admins

  • camouflaged cognates

    Because language change can have radical effects on both the sound and the meaning of a word, cognates may not be obvious, and it often takes rigorous study of historical sources and the application of the comparative method to establish whether words are cognates.

  • Geography & names

    Toponyms and geography are also closely interlinked. In many cases, place-names can be seen to be the spoken expression of Man’s view of the surrounding landscape.

  • Strong dust storms may have caused the collapse of the Akkadian Empire

    Fossil coral records provide new evidence that frequent winter shamals, or dust storms, and a prolonged cold winter season contributed to the collapse of the ancient Akkadian Empire in Mesopotamia.

  • Was Jesus a carpenter?

    Only twice do the gospels refer to Jesus as a carpenter. But the word might not mean what we think it does.

  • The Myth Of The Masada

    The Masada myth is the early Zionist retelling of the Siege of Masada, and an Israeli national myth.

  • Meaning of Egypt

    The Sinai Peninsula has provided a continuous land bridge connecting northeast Africa and Asia, and particularly Ancient Egypt with the Levant. [01] Sinai is triangular in shape, with its northern shore lying on the southern Mediterranean Sea, and its southwest and southeast shores on the Gulf of Suez and the Gulf of Aqaba of the…

  • The myth of universal deluge

    The archaeological record outside of Mesopotamia does not support a universal flood model. All of the evidence, both biblical and scientific, leads to the conclusion that the Noachian deluge was a local, rather than universal, flood.

  • Pre-Greek

    The lexicon of Ancient Greek contains hundreds of foreign words. These words can be recognized, because they do not correspond with the Greek outcomes of Indo-European phonology and corresponding sound laws. Moreover, the semantics of many Greek words are obviously not Indo-European, since their concepts were absent in this language of nomadic pastoralists from the…

  • Simon Peter: Meaning & Etymology

    “Σίμων/Simon”, “Κηφᾶς/Cephas” and “Πέτρος/Peter” are the New Testament’s three different names for St. Peter. These names have long given rise to numerous scholarly theories and explanations. Here is an anthroponymic approach to the meaning and etymology of Simon, Peter and Cephas.

  • Semitic and Indo-European words

    There is a compelling “lexical similarity” between Semitic and Indo-European languages. These two families, share many cognate words. Some of these words underwent phonetic changes, and became: “camouflaged cognates”, while others are still “explicit cognates”. a Cognate is a word which is historically derived from the same source as another word. For example: The Arabic…