# Etymology of Persian آدم-âdam (human, person, anyone/body)



## PersoLatin

Is آدم-âdam ultimately derived from OP, adam (maybe cognate with English I, Greek εγώ), or from the biblical Adam?


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## fdb

No, of course it is Hebrew, via Arabic. In classical Arabic you say ibn ʼādam “son of Adam” to mean “man”. In Persian this is abbreviated to just ādam.


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## PersoLatin

Thank you. So there's no possibility that the OP 'adam' and the Hebrew Adam, started to be interchangeably used, after contact with Jews, or the Arabs, due to their accidental similarity of meaning & sound?


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## fdb

I fail to see the “similarity in meaning”. Anyway, the OP pronoun for the 1st person singular _adam_ (Avestan _azəm_) has two short vowels; Hebrew_ ʼāḏām_ has two long vowels.


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## PersoLatin

So what does the OP 'adam' mean, is it 'I am'? I'm sure I read somewhere, it relates to the English I and the Latin ego, etc.

The Persian version of biblical Adam, has one long vowel, âdam. As Sa'di says: 
........بنى آدم اعضاى يكديگرند


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## Treaty

If there was an interchange, it should have been when Persian used both _adam _(I) and _ādām _(Adam) at the same time. Consequently, we would expect that only after this stage that the hybrid word _ādam _has been used in Persian. The problem is that there is no evidence for the usage of Adam in OP or in any pre-Manichaean texts among Persians. The oldest Persian usage of Adam, if I'm not wrong, is in MP (Manichaean) as 'd'm (_ādām_) that reflects the Hebrew original. It should be noted that _adam_ pronoun was apparently abandoned before MP stage. Therefore, the interchange couldn't have happened neither before MP (as MP still used _ādām_) nor in or after it (as MP didn't use _adam_ pronoun anymore).


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## berndf

PersoLatin said:


> The Persian version of biblical Adam, has one long vowel, âdam.


Yes, because, as fdb said, it is via Arabic where the second _a_ is short as well.


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## PersoLatin

Treaty said:


> If there was an interchange, it should have been when Persian used both _adam _(I) and _ādām _(Adam) at the same time. Consequently, we would expect that only after this stage that the hybrid word _ādam _has been used in Persian. The problem is that there is no evidence for the usage of Adam in OP or in any pre-Manichaean texts among Persians. The oldest Persian usage of Adam, if I'm not wrong, is in MP (Manichaean) as 'd'm (_ādām_) that reflects the Hebrew original. It should be noted that _adam_ pronoun was apparently abandoned before MP stage. Therefore, the interchange couldn't have happened neither before MP (as MP still used _ādām_) nor in or after it (as MP didn't use _adam_ pronoun anymore).


Thank you Treaty, I thought this was similar to Persian راى and the Arabic رأى but as you have explained, it is not plausible. I should have made the question more clear.


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## mataripis

Yes I believe it came from biblical ADAM. The first human language had this terminology and in my personal opinion it means person of origin. I think the word ATA of Dravidian turkinon and of Aramaic originated from that word.The difference is that ADAM has M which mean a title of Origin or pioneer one unlike ATA which mean the ordinary one or form or common form.


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## wiiiilmaaaa

PersoLatin said:


> Is آدم-âdam ultimately derived from OP, adam (maybe cognate with English I, Greek εγώ), or from the biblical Adam?



The word "human" in Avestân (Old Persian) language is "ayudâman" *ایودامن *which has the meaning of "the first creature of god".
The first humans were designated as "mašya". That's what in other languages and e.g. in the bible would be "Adam". "Mašyâka" مَشیاکَ in other languages or also in the bible would be synonymous to the female "Eva".

The origin of the Persian word "âdam" that we use in everyday modern Persian, when we are talking about humans, is the aforementioned "ayudâman". In other Indo-German/ Indo-European languages "âdam" is being called: human/ man (English), humain/ l'homme (French), l'uomo/ omo (Italian), Homo (Latin), el hombre (Spanish), Mensch/ Mann/ man (German). 

In many Indo-European languages as English, German and Spanish, interestingly, you can see in the list above that the neutral gender meaning of human and specifically the male/ masculine version of man are interwoven and intertwined.


As you can see the Modern Persian "âdam" that we are commonly using goes back to its Old Persian/ Avestan root "ayudâman" and has nothing to do with a semitic or biblical word "Adam". 

It is always good scientific practice, especially when we are trying to research Indo-Iranian languages, which, compared to other languages, are very ancient languages, to search for the root of our nowaday modern words. This is very conveniently possible for Iranian and Indian languages. As you can clearly see such a way of research also makes much more sense: We have Old Persian/ Avestan, Middle Persian/ Pahlavi and Modern Persian/ Parsi all at our disposal. Then we have Vedic and classical Sanskrit which are extremely similar to Avestan. So it makes absolutely no sense to go and look for roots to certain Persian or Indian words in other languages until we haven't found out if there is an origin to the word in the Indo-Iranian/ Arian languages directly. 
If you can say with some certainty that you haven't succeeded in finding anything, then sure, go ahead and look somewhere else and try to decipher and decode the possible origins of words.


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## PersoLatin

wiiiilmaaaa said:


> The word "human" in Avestân (Old Persian) language is "ayudâman" *ایودامن *which has the meaning of "the first creature of god".


Please provide a reference, anything other than wiki will be great.


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## CyrusSH

Ayudâman is really a funny word! I think it is from my article about similarities between Iranian and Germanic cultures, about the first creature in these cultures (primeval cow), I just talked about the similarity between Avestan _aēvō.dātā_ (first creature) and Germanic _Audumla_.


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## fdb

aēuuō.dāta- is an adjective with the meaning “uniquely created”. It refers not to the first man (gayō.marətan), but to the primaeval cow.


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## CyrusSH

The same thing can be said about Adamah, it refers not to the first man (Adam) but to the earth.


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## berndf

wiiiilmaaaa said:


> As you can see the Modern Persian "âdam" that we are commonly using goes back to its Old Persian/ Avestan root "ayudâman" and has nothing to do with a semitic or biblical word "Adam".


We have read good reason above (#6) why this should be wrong. If you disagree then argue against it. But such an apodictic statement is out of place.


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## CyrusSH

fdb said:


> I fail to see the “similarity in meaning”. Anyway, the OP pronoun for the 1st person singular _adam_ (Avestan _azəm_) has two short vowels; Hebrew_ ʼāḏām_ has two long vowels.



It can be a reason that Old Persian _adam_ and Hebrew _ʼāḏām_ probably didn't relate to each other but we just don't know Old Persian _adam_ also meant first man and human or not, by considering this fact that the Middle Persian (also Modern Persian) pronoun for the 1st person singular _man_ relates to the first man in the Iranian culture, who has been mentioned as the first thinker "manas-paoirya" in Avesta.


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## PersoLatin

fdb said:


> No, of course it is Hebrew, via Arabic. In classical Arabic you say ibn *ʼādam *“son of Adam” to mean “man”. In Persian this is abbreviated to just ādam.





fdb said:


> I fail to see the “similarity in meaning”. Anyway, the OP pronoun for the 1st person singular _adam_ (Avestan _azəm_) has two short vowels; Hebrew_ *ʼāḏām*_ has two long vowels.



Based on the answers in posts above (#6 & fdb's), I am fairly happy that OP (Old Persian) adam and Arabic/ʼādam are not linked. But I'd like to understand, and I'd appreciate a simple explanation, if there is one, why is it we can argue that, the OP adam and Arabic/ʼādam are not related because of the strong (ā) in the latter, (of course plus lack of “similarity in meaning” on the face of it), yet the same difference exists between the Hebrew_ ʼāḏām _and _Arabic/ʼādam_, but we know these are both Semitic? Maybe we can ignore the OP adam here and treat this as a generic question.


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## Treaty

PersoLatin said:


> we can argue that, the OP adam and Arabic/ʼādam are not related because of the strong (ā) in the latter, (of course plus lack of “similarity in meaning” on the face of it), yet the same difference exists between the Hebrew_ ʼāḏām _and _Arabic/ʼādam_


I don't think this is fdb's logic. He was probably was responding to your logic:


PersoLatin said:


> ... due to their accidental similarity of meaning & *sound*?


You seemed to have implied a similarity in sounds would suggest some kind of association. fdb pointed out that there was not much similarity in sound either, let alone to infer something from it.
Anyway, those Arabic and Hebrew words have obviously same meaning and cultural history. So, the vowel difference won't really question their relationship. Your concern might have been on point if the Arabic word had had an irrelevant meaning (e.g. Arabic plural _ʼādām_ = some kind of bread?).


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