# Guadalupe



## Nmbele

I looked up the name Guadalupe in this forum before joining.
I read many definitions for this name that contradict each other on the meaning of the name. I understand it is an Arabic word.Can someone who speaks Arabic Translate this clearly?
Nbele


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## Ander

The etymology I heard most is a half Arabic, half Spanish explanation.
Guada- is from Arabic waad  وادvalley or river and -lupe from Spanish lobo wolf.


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## Nmbele

Thank you, 
This makes sense because I am looking for the origins of the  name for the Patroness of México " La Virgen de Guadalupe".
The spanish were under Islamic rule for more than 7 centuries.
The spanish than invaded Mexico. Thus, the  mesh
of two words from two different languages makes sense. I had read  in different sources and found  2 different meanings. One was "River of Love" the other was " River of Light".
I finally thought I should ask someone who speaks Arabic. Nmbele


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## Ander

Nmbele said:


> Thank you,
> This makes sense because I am looking for the origins of the  name for the Patroness of México " La Virgen de Guadalupe".
> The spanish were under Islamic rule for more than 7 centuries.
> The spanish than invaded Mexico. Thus, the  mesh
> of two words from two different languages makes sense. I had read  in different sources and found  2 different meanings. One was "River of Love" the other was " River of Light".
> I finally thought I should ask someone who speaks Arabic. Nmbele



I don't belong to the people "who speak Arabic" if you mean someone whose mother language is Arabic.

Let's wait for their opinion as I am interested in the name Guadalupe too because one of our French départements is "la Guadeloupe".


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## Mklangelo

Nmbele said:


> I looked up the name Guadalupe in this forum before joining.
> I read many definitions for this name that contradict each other on the meaning of the name. I understand it is an Arabic word.Can someone who speaks Arabic Translate this clearly?
> Nbele



Another clue is found in english in the word "lupine" it means "of or relating to or characteristic of wolves."


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## ayed

The Valley of Wolf
*وادي الذئب*
*وادي الذيب*
*===============*
La Virgen de Guadalupe may be :
Virgin of the Wolf Valley
Virgin fo the Valley of Wolf
*عذراء وادي الذئب*


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## Arrius

*وادي الذئب*
*وادي الذيب*
Wadi adhdhanb (valley of debt/guilt) and Wadi adhdhiib (valley of the wolf).
The second may well be a translation of Guadalupe, but I don't understand the significance of the first. Neither dhanb nor dhib have any phonetic similarity to "lupe", which ayed probably did not intend to say anyway. Perhaps this is how Arab geographers and historians refer to them?
There are scores of Spanish place names beginning with Guada derived from wadi (valley or river), but Wikipedia throws no light on the etymology of the "lupe" part. Lupus is Latin for wolf which must have progressed through "lupe"
to the present Castilian "lobo" (cf. French loup) in Hispania, one of the oldest Roman provinces. The second part of the name is unlikely to be Arabic because the language has no P.
On the other hand, there have been many Germanic speakers on the Iberian Peninsula before the Moors "opened" (fataha) the place, as they put it. Vandals and Visigoths for instance, the former giving their name to AlAndalus (Andalucia). It is conceivable that some cognate of modern German "lieb" (love/lovely) in which the B is pronounced as a P, was the origin of "lupe" and in German poetry "ie" is a frequent rhyme for "ü". For Nmbele's other suggestion "River of Light", I can see no justification:
Latin "lux" (Spanish "luz") is unlikely to have evolved into "lupe, and the Arabic for light is "nuur". I would welcome the opinion of our member Tajabone, who is an expert on this sort of problem.


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## Nmbele

Thank you Ayed and Thank you Arrius.
This is becoming more interesting by the  minute. As I previously said, I did not think the translations" river of light" "or river of love" were correct. This is why I asked this question to anyone who is familiar with Arabic Language. One thing I am seeing every one agree on is Wadi meaning (valley or river). The idea of the second part meaning (debt or guilt) makes sense historically. The meaning (wolves) changes the perspective of the virgin her self. I am elated to have joined this forum. This information is fascinating. Again, thank you all. Nmbele


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## MeiLing

Arrius,
Ayed has written _'Wadi adhdhiib'_ (*وادي الذئـب*) and NOT _'wadi adhdhanb'_ (*وادي الذنـب*). 
I guess the letter (*ئـ*) is not clear because he has used the bold font in writing the Arabic words, but his English translation is clear!


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## ayed

MeiLing said:


> Arrius,
> Ayed has written _'Wadi adhdhiib'_ (*وادي الذئـب*) and NOT _'wadi adhdhanb'_ (*وادي الذنـب*).
> I guess the letter (*ئـ*) is not clear because he has used the bold font in writing the Arabic words, but his English translation is clear!


 
Thank you , Meiling for clarification


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## MeiLing

You're always welcome, Ayed.


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## smooha

Hello, everybody,

After a quick Google search, I found that this exact question was addressed in August 2004 in the Etymology forum by elroy..

He quoted the following in his post from another source (which I can't reference yet [under 30 posts]):
A river in the Spanish region of Extremadura was named by the Moors in Arabic _wad(i)-al-hub_ 'river of love', due to the reputedly aphrodisiac qualities of its water.

As Elroy states, wadi is in fact "valley," not river.  However, this point aside, the above seems the most logical of explanations.

The original thread can be found at forum.wordreference.com/showthread.php?t=53639

Hope this helps.


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## Nikola

Some other possibilities. 
Nombre Femenino de origen Árabe. link
Del árabe río de cantos negros. river of black chants.
ce qui revient à oued-el-oub. Précisément cela se traduit par rivière de l'amour. link وادي الحب. I think everyone agrees the first part is وادي .The second is in question.
Most sources give wadi as dried river bed.


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## Ander

Nikola said:


> Some other possibilities.
> Nombre Femenino de origen Árabe. link
> Del árabe río de cantos negros. river of black chants.
> 
> Most sources give wadi as dried river bed.



I would not consider the seriousness of your link as it deals also with numerology.

In North Africa a wadi is a dry river bed for the most part of the year except in the rainy season when it becomes a wild river .
To know the exact meaning of wadi at the time of the Muslim al-Andalus one must consider that the name wadi has been given to rivers which have water all year round as the Guadalquivir, the Guadiana or the Guadalhorce.
So I think we can keep the translation river preferably to valley.


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## Nikola

Ander said:


> I would not consider the seriousness of your link as it deals also with numerology.
> 
> In North Africa a wadi is a dry river bed for the most part of the year except in the rainy season when it becomes a wild river .
> To know the exact meaning of wadi at the time of the Muslim al-Andalus one must consider that the name wadi has been given to rivers which have water all year round as the Guadalquivir, the Guadiana or the Guadalhorce.
> So I think we can keep the translation river preferably to valley.


The first link is just one mention the second is the most likely that is why I put the Arabic,other posters have other ideas.A wadi has several definitions.


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## Ander

Nikola said:


> The first link is just one mention the second is the most likely that is why I put the Arabic,other posters have other ideas.A wadi has several definitions.



I had overlooked your second link.

The only thing which is hard for me to accept is that Guadalupe should be a mix between an Arabic word and a Spanish/Latin word.

Another explanation could be that when the Berber conquerers heard river of the lobos in Spanish they misunderstood it as river of love waadi l-hubb.


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## ayed

Could it be :
The valley of seed(?)


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## Arrius

My thanks to Mei Ling and my apologies to ayed, 50% of whose previous posting I genuinely found incongruous: like Cassius, "my sight was ever thick". It seems to be raining plausible etymologies now! But don't we have a fellow member with some obscure reference book that records the time when the Moorish invaders, whether Arabic or Berber speaking, came upon this river in Extremadura for the first time, like Dr Livingstone to Victoria Falls, and felt the need to call it by some name, whether new or old? Though this, of course, may still not solve the puzzle.


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## Arrius

PS On re-reading the thread, I find smooha quoting Elroy's explanation the most convincing. In "wadi alHubb" (River of Love) it is not surprising that the H has disappeared even though it is an emphatic H, and the Latin H continued to be pronounced for some time in Spain as Latin became Spanish. Whereas in French there is still a hint of the "H aspirée" in some high-class speech , it has now totally disappeared from modern spoken Spanish. It is a pleasant thought that Extremadura, an inhospitable region whose rocky terrain and extreme temperatures helped to drive out Cortez and his band of cut-throats to the conquest of Mexico, has also such a charming story associated with it.


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## Qcumber

My impression is that once Gualdalquivir was established as a Spanish word, the beginning guadal- was used to coin new toponyms, e.g. Guadalcanal, so that -lupe (ll > l) / -upe in Guadalupe may well be a local term.


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## Ander

Guadalcanal is not a new toponym. See here http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guadalcanal,_Spain


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## Outsider

Ander said:


> In North Africa a wadi is a dry river bed for the most part of the year except in the rainy season when it becomes a wild river .
> To know the exact meaning of wadi at the time of the Muslim al-Andalus one must consider that the name wadi has been given to rivers which have water all year round as the Guadalquivir, the Guadiana or the Guadalhorce.


Recently, in a documentary about Spain, I heard that explanation for the meaning of _wadi_, the Arabic source of the prefix _guad-_.

It could have happened that the meaning of the word shifted in Al-Andalus. Since many of the conquerors came from north Africa, maybe they broadened the original sense of _wadi_, applying it to all river valleys in the peninsula, regardless of whether they dried seasonally or not.


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## Ander

I've heard of another explanation for Guadalupe. It may mean "river of the white pebbles", something in Arabic like wadi l-lub, lub meaning white stones.

A similar word loubia (as it is spelled in North Africa) means white beans.


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## Arrius

_alubia _is also the Spanish for _white bean_ (according to the Real Academia Española,from Spanish Arabic _allúbya_, derived from Classical Arabic _lúbiyā',_ which is from the Persian _lubeyā_).
According to my Arabic-German dictionary the word is used in Egypt to denote green beans.

*Mod note:*
*The discussing regarding al-lubya and different kinds of beans is now in this thread.*


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