# Yahudi, Jew, Hebrew...?



## cynicmystic

I find it quite strange that there are many words that refer to Jews, and yet the origins of these words are a bit obscure. 

For example, today, Hebrew, generally, refers to a revived language, and secondarily, to a person of Jewish tradition. The etymology of the word is not clear. Some link it to the Egyptian word 'habiru', either meaning 'wanderer' or 'the other side of the river', others claim a Mesopotamian origin. 

The term Jew, on the other, is said to derive from the city name of Judah, meaning someone from the city of Judah. In Turkish, there are two words that are used, namely 'Musevi' and 'Yahudi'. For some reason that I have not been able figure out, Turks tend to refrain from using the term 'yahudi' as it has more of a negative connotation, and you would risk sounding anti-semitic if you didn't use 'Musevi' instead. Strangely, though, 'yahudi' is simply Farsi meaning 'of Yehuda', which is related, possibly, to 'Yahweh', one of the names of the Jewish deity El. Then, we bump into the puzzling name of Israel, which, apprently can be broken down as IS+RA+EL, meaning 'Soldiers of El' (El being the Jewish Deity). As if all of this is not sufficient, then comes the schism of the Sephardim vs Ashkenazim, not to mention the controversial Khazar Kaghanate and the European Jewry. 

Does anyone else think that all these words are quite the misnomers? 

For example, what was the term for a Canaanite at the time when the Israelites were on Exodus? Were they referred to as Habiru by the Canaanites? If so, how did the Exodus crowd refer to the Canaanites? Were they referred to as Israelites, Habirus...?


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## Aoyama

First of all, food for thought : two threads that might give you some answers.


http://forum.wordreference.com/showthread.php?p=1470899#post1470899


http://forum.wordreference.com/showt...B%26%231076%3B

This being given, it is very difficult to follow you into your interesting question, but I will give it a try :



> Strangely, though, 'yahudi' is simply Farsi meaning 'of Yehuda', which is related, possibly, to 'Yahweh', one of the names of the Jewish deity El


Yahudi /yehudi is in no way related to Yahweh, an arbitrary reading of the verb to be in Hebrew (Yahweh/Yaveh can also be read Yehovah), understood to be a rendition of the name of God, as being :[the One who] has been, is, will be (thus, the Eternal).
Yahudi/yehudi, simply come , as you stated yourself 





> from the city name of Judah, meaning someone from the city of Judah


. Judah, Judea etc.
For the origin of the word Hebrew (Habiru) or simply Hever/Heber, it comes from a word meaning "the other side" [of a/the river].



> the puzzling name of Israel, which, apparently can be broken down as IS+RA+EL, meaning 'Soldiers of El' (El being the Jewish Deity).


That is true, with one objection as to 





> (El being the Jewish Deity)


:
El in fact just means _above_ (same root in Allah, or in Israel's national airlines name EL AL), the same idea can be found in Japanese (Kami), and probably in other languages, where the _sky_ (what is above) is considered to embed deity. God (or in Romance languages Deus/Dios/Dio/Dieu etc coming from the Greek Zeus) being of _pagan origin_ .

Someone else might take it from here ...


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## Outsider

Hi. I don't know the answers to your questions, but let me just note that it's not unusual for a perfectly innocent word in one language to become derogatory in a neighbouring language. Some more examples.


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## Frank06

*Hi,*

*The topic of this thread is "Yahudi, Jew, Hebrew...".*
*If anybody wants to discuss any other word (say "El-"), then please open a new thread.*

*Edit: From the WR Rules (to be found here: Rules]*


> 8. Please stay within the topic area of the forum you are posting a message in.
> 9. Stay on the topic of the first post in each thread. If you wish to talk about a related subject, open a new thread.
> 10. Ask about only one topic in each thread. If you have more than one question, open a thread for each of them.


 
*Groetjes,*

*Frank*
*Moderator EHL*


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## Montaigne

I promise I'll stick to the subject.
"Ibri" used as an adjective for the first time in the Bible (Genesis XIV, 13) refers to the Jewish people and could derive from "Eber" the great-grand-son of Sem, son of Noah.
In the Middle Ages, Abraham ben Ezra, commenting The Exodus(XXI,2)writes that the Ibri are so named because they come from over the river(Euphrates)"mé-eber"
The Habiru (or Habiri) were nomadic looters who invaded Canaan around 1350 BC, while the Apiru were in Egypt slaves from eastern countries but
these etymologies are disputable.
Yahud comes from Juda son of Jacob, later giving Judaeus (latin),Juif, Jew
Judio(spanish) etc..Hope this helps.


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## Mahaodeh

Hebrew is in Arabic Ibri, wich means _the one who crossed (the river); _in Arabic it is understood that they are called so because they crossed the river Euphraties as mentioned above.

Jew, I have no idea.

Yahudi (at least in Arabic, I would also assume the Turkish Yahudi is borrowed from Arabic) means a person from Yahud, it is believed (at least among Arabs) that the reason for calling them so is that they were guided to God as yahood is derived from the root verb hada (to guide).

I don't know if the same root h d a in Hebrew has the same meaning but it may.  If it did, Juda (yahootha in Arabic) 's name can mean something like (the guided one).

Anyway, I'm not saying this is the correct etmology, just what is understood in Arabic.


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## Forero

Many Hebrew names, such as Joshua, do begin with a J prefix (Jeho), which is a short form of the name of the Deity, but the J of Jew and Judah is not that prefix.

Spanish judío, and presumably also English Jew, is from Hebrew Jehud, from Jehudah (Judah), the one mentioned in Genesis 29:35.  Jehudah means "celebrated", and derives from jadah, "praise" or "revere", and jadah derives ultimately from jad, meaning "hand".


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## cynicmystic

How about the city of Jidde, and the Judi Mountain, primarily occupied by Kurds, who claim Judaic origins?


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## Mahaodeh

Forero,  the word 'jad' you mentioned above as well as 'jehud' and 'Jehudah', how is the J pronnounced in Hebrew?


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## Forero

Mahaodeh said:


> Forero,  the word 'jad' you mentioned above as well as 'jehud' and 'Jehudah', how is the J pronnounced in Hebrew?



Like IPA /j/ (English "y" in "youth").  The corresponding Arabic letter resembles an "S", or an apostrophe with two dots under it.


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## Aoyama

> Forero, the word 'jad' you mentioned above as well as 'jehud' and 'Jehudah', how is the J pronnounced in Hebrew?


As Forero said "Y" is OK.
Or also, as a "Yod". Remember also how this letter is called in Italian : i lungo ...


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## berndf

cynicmystic said:


> ...Then, we bump into the puzzling name of Israel, which, apprently can be broken down as IS+RA+EL, meaning 'Soldiers of El' (El being the Jewish Deity).
> ...
> Sephardim vs Ashkenazim


 
Israel is surname of Jacob bestowed on him by God. Hence the term B'ne-Israel, children of Israel for the people of Isreal. The 12 Israeli tribes are named after the sons of Jacob, one of them being Jehudah. The word Israel comes from a verb stem *SRH, to fight, struggle. The second part from 'eL = god, so it is ISRa+'eL, not IS+RA+EL. God there tested Jacob by letting him struggle with an angel. In the passage occurs also the 2nd sing masc. perfect "SaRITaH" which according to normal conjugation patterns suggests a stem *SRH (S=Sin, not Samech!).

Sepherad and Ashzenaz are medieval Hebrew words for Spain and Germany, respectively. These countries hosted the biggest communities of European Jews at the time.


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## Kaschiller

Jew
"J - the sound represented in English by J, has no Hebrew equivalent. It can be heard only in words borrowed from other languages including Arabic. (ex. John, Jamal, Jobotinsky)"
source: Hebrew Dictionary by Hayim Baltsan
Jew transliterated - Yehoodee 
source: Hebrew Dictionary by Hayim Baltsan
Yekheed|ee- singular , alone
Yekheedey Segoolah - outstanding people: people who are one in a million.

Iudeu(sg) ,(iudei-pl)-in romanian

from starling.rinet.ru:

Proto Germanic *þiudṓ; *þiudana-s - meaning people
Old English: þēod, -e f. `nation, people; district occupied by a people, country; language'; { þēoden `king, lord, God' }
Gothic: þiuda f. (ō) `people, nation; heathen, gentiles'; þiudan-s m. (a) `king'
Old Norse: þjōđ f. `Volk'; þjōđan-n m. `Fürst, König' (poet.)


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## berndf

Relating the stems Jod-Heh-Deleth and Jod-Heth-Daleth does not appear plausible to me. Sound shifts between Heh and Heth are not very common as far as I know. Jod-Heth-Daleth is etymologically related to aleph-heth-daleth ('ehadh, modern herew 'ehkad, one). The explanation as "the single (chosen) people" which you suggest would make sense if the were the name for the people of Israel and not just for the tribe of Judah.

I would be very cautious to do any conjectures based on phonetic similarities between Indo-European and Semitic-Hamitic languages. The likelyhood is that they are accidental. There is no demonstrable etymological relationship between the two language groups.


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## Frank06

Hi,


Kaschiller said:


> Proto-Germanic *þiudṓ; *þiudana-s - meaning people[etc.]


Again I notice that you randomly quote from dictionaries. Again I fail to see your point. 
Proto-Germanic *þiudō goes back to PIE *teut-, so if you want to make a point whatsoever, you have to take this PIE root into account. 
Anyway, neither the PGm nor the PIE root come even close to the Hebrew one. By the way, in stead of a Hebrew root, you should take the Proto-Semitic root into account.
And even if they would resemble each other, then you _still_ have to come up with a solid explanation to clarify the relation. Mindlessly quoting dictionaries without any further explanation really doesn't do the job.

Frank

PS: Please check your encoding when copying and pasting from starling.rinet.ru (and any other website for that matter). I do realise that the encoding on this website sometimes acts in mysterious ways, but you can always change the pasted text while proofreading.
In this particular case, **ʮ*iud-ō stands for *þ*iudō. You can use the "Preview Post" button to check your message before pressing the "Submit Reply" button.

PPS: A list of Proto-Semitic roots can be found here.


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## pianoplayer123

All great questions.  Biblical archaeologists and historians have been parsing out these terms for quite a number of years.  My research has come up with the following:

"Jew" came from the name "Judea," which was a name given to the region of the Levant by the Romans when they defeated the Hasmonean (Judah the Maccabee) reign in 37 BC.  Before that, no one had heard of the name "Jew."  Hence, no mention of the word Jew in the Old Testament.  Rome would develop a deep hatred for the Jewish people after three costly wars with them in the first and second centuries A.D. Rome would therefore rename the area Palestine, in honor of the Philistines, historical rivals of the Jews.

Yehud was the name given to this same people when the Persian leader Cyrus the Great allowed the Jewish people to return to the Levant after the Babylonians had captured them in 586 BC.  The return began around 536 BC.  Yehud I would assume is the Persian pronunciation of Judah.

Before the Babylonians captured the Levant, the area the Jewish people lived in was called "Judah."  If you were from there, you were called a "Judahite."  Prior to the fall of the Northern Kingdom of Israel in 721 BC, when the Assyrians appropriated that area, if you lived in the north, you were called an "Israelite."  Both Judahites and Israelites were loosely confederated at the start of the United Kingdom of Israel back around 1040 BC with Kings Saul, David, and Solomon, but this didn't last long and it was evident, as attested by the Old Testament as well as Archaeological evidence, that the two regions were markedly different ideologically, often resulting in conflict and ultimate schism.

Now before there ever was an Israel or Judah, there was Canaan.  Some consider the ancient Jewish people, before they were Jews, Yehudis, Judahites, or Israelites, to be Canaanites.  This might be so, although there are those that support the notion (G. Thomson/"Haribu") that the ancient Jews wandered in from Mesopotamia and Arabia as Amorite Merchants and Herders, running caravans throughout the Levant without ever fully assimilating into the pre-existing city states that had sprung up there as vassals of Egypt.  The Amorites ultimately stayed off the beaten path, hanging out in the less desirable hill country to graze their animals and do a little farming (forming hill communities in what is now the West Bank). 

The origin of the word "Hebrew" has been very controversial, especially as it suggests that an integral component of the formation of the Jewish people began through the instigating forces of brigands, mercenaries, thieves--roving bands of Canaanite Delinquents, if you will, many of whom being escaped slaves (from all parts of the Fertile Crescent--not just Egypt), with little desire to be executed for escaping slavery, as well as those who weren't escaped slaves, but had become alienated from the mainstream culture of Idol worship in Egypt and Mesopotamia, they being from a nomadic, Amoritic, "lower class" background.  These roving bands began to put pressure on the settled Amorite Hillbillies scratching out a living to form a confederation of tribes.  

The most compelling evidence I have seen that the word "Hebrew" comes from the word "Habiru," a word existing well before the Isralite or Judahite identity, is from the Book of I Samuel in which Hebrews are mentioned numerous times as a distinct group from Israel, a group that will join Israel.  It is interesting that Saul, the first king of Israel, appears to be from a good, established family in the area (Amorite origins?), while David, the second king, who Saul would ultimately come to hate, was a shot caller from a band of 600 Habiru.


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## berndf

The name of the Kingdom of _Judea _is certainly older than the Hasmonean kingdom. A kingdom of _Yehudah_ with Jerusalem as its capital existed already before the Babylonian Exile and its name was derived from the Israelite tribe of _Yehudah_ which together with the tribe of _Lewi_ according to Biblical tradition settled in the area.


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## Ihsiin

I'd have thought that Hebrew would derive from עברי.


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## pianoplayer123

Okay, I'm no linguist.  Especially when it comes to the letters "J" and "Y," which seem to switch around between English and German.  I was mostly concentrating on the ending of Judea, or Iudea (also called by the Romans), with attention given to the "ea" at the end.  This is most certainly *latin*, a *Romanization* of Judah, Yehuda, Yehudah (I'm good with any of those).  The Romanization of the name occurred _after_ the Roman conquest in 37 BC.  Some conclude that this opened the door to the rather jarring word "Jew" (Wolfe/"From Haribu to Hebrews"), an amalgamated description of peoples that previously went by their tribal names ending with "ite," (Levite, Edomite, Benjamite, or the confederated tribal name of Judahite or Israelite).  We know of course how the name "Jew" would eventually be used, like some stinging, accusatory dagger, down the course of history.  In fact, I'm going to start a movement.  From now on, everybody has to call me a Judahite....or was I an Israelite....


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## pianoplayer123

Yes, that is the conservative, and perhaps more agreed upon view.  But from what I understand, that word just comes from a particular person's name, so we don't get a lot of explanatory power out of it.  Certainly not enough to explain how the name came to be used to describe a whole class of people.  Culturally, contextually, "Haribu" adds up.  There is much lawlessness and reference to escaped slaves in the Old Testament (quite apart from Exodus).  What's more, complaints of banditry from Habiru (Akkadian pronunciation) or Apiru (Egyptian) begin around the 1800s BC, reach their height during the Amarna Tablets era (in the 1300s BC, when Pharaoh Akenamon has begun to neglect his colonies), then complaints specific to the Haribu seem to come to an abrupt end in the mid 11th century BC, right at the time when the Hebrew tribes are confederating.  This is also the time when the word "Hebrew" ceases to be used in the Bible as well, since now the confederated tribes have the unified name of Israel. The online article "Hebrews, Arameans, Israelites," by Dennis Bratcher is quite good and explains it very well.


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## origumi

pianoplayer123 said:


> Yes, that is the conservative, and perhaps more agreed upon view.  But from what I understand, that word just comes from a particular person's name, so we don't get a lot of explanatory power out of it.  Certainly not enough to explain how the name came to be used to describe a whole class of people.  Culturally, contextually, "Haribu" adds up.  There is much lawlessness and reference to escaped slaves in the Old Testament (quite apart from Exodus).  What's more, complaints of banditry from Habiru (Akkadian pronunciation) or Apiru (Egyptian) begin around the 1800s BC, reach their height during the Amarna Tablets era (in the 1300s BC, when Pharaoh Akenamon has begun to neglect his colonies), then complaints specific to the Haribu seem to come to an abrupt end in the mid 11th century BC, right at the time when the Hebrew tribes are confederating.  This is also the time when the word "Hebrew" ceases to be used in the Bible as well, since now the confederated tribes have the unified name of Israel. The online article "Hebrews, Arameans, Israelites," by Dennis Bratcher is quite good and explains it very well.


Hebrew עברי appears in the book of Jonah 1:9, 8th century, much later than the time you say it ceased to be used. Also in Jeremiah 34, few times.


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## rayloom

pianoplayer123 said:


> "Jew" came from the name "Judea," which was a name given to the region of the Levant by the Romans when they defeated the Hasmonean (Judah the Maccabee) reign in 37 BC.  Before that, no one had heard of the name "Jew."  Hence, no mention of the word Jew in the Old Testament.  Rome would develop a deep hatred for the Jewish people after three costly wars with them in the first and second centuries A.D. Rome would therefore rename the area Palestine, in honor of the Philistines, historical rivals of the Jews.



"Jew" and "Jews" do occur in the Old Testament. In Hebrew it's Yehudi (singular)/Yehudim (plural). The form Jew is the rendition of the name in English, and it's the result of several secondary changes on the original Hebrew form Yehudi. See also here.
Of Course Judah is Yehuda in Hebrew. And a native (or inhabitant or descendant) of Judah (Yehuda) would be called Yehudi in Hebrew, not Judahite (nor Yehudahite). The -ite suffix is not Hebrew, it's Greco-Latin in origin.

As for the name Palestine to designate the region, the naming is much older than that. No need to get off-topic, so you can check this link for a history of the name.


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## pianoplayer123

Thanks, I stand corrected.  However this is still consistent with the use of the word "Haribu" as a wandering social class, subject to mischief, just as "Hebrew" is seen to describe the same (Jonah, 1:8: "Tell us, we pray thee, for whose cause this evil is upon us; What is thine occupation? and whence comest thou? what is thy country?"), and just possibly ethnicity (although social class and ethnicity, I imagine, were more interconnected in those days)--(Jonah, 1:9: "I am a Hebrew..."), which seems to explain it all, even though he could have said he was from Gath-hepher, where some sources say he and his father are from.


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## pianoplayer123

Yes I'm aware that "Philistia" (and its numerous other names depending on what peoples are making note of it) was established early on, around 1150 BC, centered around the five major cities of Ashkelon, Ashdod, Ekron, Gath, and Gaza.  I was referring to the Romanized version of the name, Palaestina (or long form: Syro-Palaestina), which I believe was the name given to the region following the Jewish revolts, squelching the names Judea and Samaria.  Before 1150 BC, it was all Canaan, except for Phoenicia, up Lebanon way.


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## berndf

pianoplayer123 said:


> ...it was all Canaan, except for Phoenicia, up Lebanon way.


No need to say"except": _Canaan_ is the Phoenician word for Phoenicia.  The name by which we know that people is of Greek origin and has nothing to do with how they called themselves.


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## pianoplayer123

Well, I was going by ancient maps which does section off the northwest coast of Phoenicia as a region unto itself, although the boundaries are not distinct from the rest of Canaan, just sort of a region.  But yeah, they were Canaanites.  Then as the Phoenicians were big purple dye makers, they got their name from the Greek for the color purple.  The Minoans of Crete used to make purple dye from mollusks.  I wonder if there is a connection between the two cultures...


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