# English God and Farsi Khuda



## lcfatima

Khuda and God:

I have read that these words are related as proto-European cognates, but read other sources that insist that the words are not related. What evidence is there that these words are related (or not)?


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## BP.

Hi Fatima,

I've heard argued that _khudaa_/_khodaa _is _khwa _(self) and _daw_/_taw _(capable/powerful), that is _al qaadir wa muqtadir_. 

Let me speak from an Urdu perspective...
I don't think _khudaa _is only reserved for God in language. We have _naa khuda_a (captain of a ship) i.e. _naau_+_khodaa_, which I feel means 'lord of the boat'.

Curious for more informed replies.


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## ancalimon

BelligerentPacifist said:


> Hi Fatima,
> 
> I've heard argued that _khudaa_/_khodaa _is _khwa _(self) and _daw_/_taw _(capable/powerful), that is _al qaadir wa muqtadir_.
> 
> Let me speak from an Urdu perspective...
> I don't think _khudaa _is only reserved for God in language. We have _naa khuda_a (captain of a ship) i.e. _naau_+_khodaa_, which I feel means 'lord of the boat'.
> 
> Curious for more informed replies.



Kut in Turkic means "the good luck bestowed upon a person" "the right (the power given by God) to be a leader, a ruler", "celebrated"..

It comes from the root "ku" meaning "spreading, permeating, shedding, giving off, radiating" in the sense of "goodness (will of God) passing through your body into your soul and spreading its influence to outside world through your body"
Thus if if a person receives KUT from God, this means God wills that person to rule over others, be a leader, or a khan or a king.

I guess the "lord of the boat" meaning is related to this Turkic usage. I don't know about the "God" usage though. It does not mean "God" in Turkic. It's just one aspect of God among 101 different aspects.


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## aruniyan

ancalimon said:


> Kut in Turkic means "the good luck bestowed upon a person" "the right (the power given by God) to be a leader, a ruler", "celebrated"..
> 
> It comes from the root "ku" meaning "spreading, permeating, shedding, giving off, radiating" in the sense of "goodness (will of God) passing through your body into your soul and spreading its influence to outside world thourgh you body"
> Thus if if a person receives KUT from God, this means God wills that person to rule over others, be a leader, or a khan or a king.
> 
> I guess the "lord of the boat" meaning is related to this Turkic usage. I don't know about the "God" usage though. It does not mean "God" in Turkic. It's just one aspect of God among 101 different aspects.



One of  Tamil words for God is *Kadavul*, literally its "One who crossed everything"..."Kada" means Crossing/Passing by, This should be from the Buddhist age where the Buddhas were considered as one who crossed the stages of Karma, life stages or the soul, but not sure if this can be related to English _God_.


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## Lugubert

BelligerentPacifist said:


> I've heard argued that _khudaa_/_khodaa _is _khwa _(self) and _daw_/_taw _(capable/powerful)


Steingass' Persian dictionary thinks from _khwud _= self and _ay _= coming, and adds "according to others related to S[anskrit] _sva-datta_ = self-given, i.e. self-created"

God seems to have the root _gheu _"to call, invoke". (The American Heritage dictionary of Indo-European Roots.)

I find it difficult to believe in a common ancestor.


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## ancalimon

Lugubert said:


> Steingass' Persian dictionary thinks from _khwud _= self and _ay _= coming, and adds "according to others related to S[anskrit] _sva-datta_ = self-given, i.e. self-created"
> 
> God seems to have the root _gheu _"to call, invoke". (The American Heritage dictionary of Indo-European Roots.)
> 
> I find it difficult to believe in a common ancestor.



In Turkic "ge" is the root for "to call"


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## aruniyan

Wikipedia says...


> *Khuda* or *Khoda* ( *خدا* ) is the Pashto word for "guide" (from the Pashto verb _"khodal"_ which means, _to lead_, or _to guide_) and has come to be used as "Lord" or "(monotheistic) God" in both Pashto and Persian.



_guides_ matches the Tamil word "_Kada_" ie "_to pass_", 

Buddha called himself as _tathā-gata_.


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## aruniyan

just read, there is _Hooda_/Hadiya in Arabic means Good Path or Guided....may not be related to Khuda?


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## Lugubert

aruniyan said:


> Wikipedia says...
> _guides_ matches the Tamil word "_Kada_" ie "_to pass_",
> Buddha called himself as _tathā-gata_.


It is an accepted truth that any similarities between words in Dravidian languages (Tamil etc.) and other languages must be loans. The only ones involving Tamil I have heard of involve Sanskrit or maybe other subcontinental Indo-European languages.

Comparing a contemporary Tamil word to a contemporary English word explains nothing, especially if the meanings aren't very close. _Kaḍa_ has no letters in common with _guide_. The ḍ (ட) in _kaḍa _is retroflex, the English d (த) isn't. Also, the presumed origin of "_guide_" is the IE root _weid_- "see", that is to say a fairly distant meaning.

Pali and Sanskrit gata is a participle from the root _gam_-, "go". I see no way that can be borrowed from/to Tamil to correspond to _kada_ "pass".



aruniyan said:


> just read, there is _Hooda_/Hadiya in Arabic means Good Path or Guided....may not be related to Khuda?


Only one letter in common. _Khuda _= *خدا*, _hudan/hady_ =  هدى. No relation.


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## ancalimon

Lugubert said:


> Only one letter in common. _Khuda _= *خدا*, _hudan/hady_ =  هدى. No relation.



Aren't they phonetically almost the same? Arabic borrow in Turkish "Hüda" is another name of God meaning "show the right thing, true way". The concept is the same with "Kut"  in essence. Tengri shows the true way by granting "kut" to a special person.

Actually in Central Asian Turks, Khodai does not mean "God". It means "omnipotent" and related with "happiness". It still exists in a similar meaning in Turkish. "Kutlama" meaning "celebration"


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## Abu Rashid

ancalimon said:


> Aren't they phonetically almost the same?


 
One begins with ه the other begins with خ. Very different phonemes. In modern Turkish spelling I think ه, ح & خ all get transliterated as 'h' though, so that's probably the source of your confusion. And in old Persian, which is where I believe this word originates, it is not even 'kh' but 'k', and was pronounced kuwdy.



ancalimon said:


> Arabic borrow in Turkish "Hüda"


 
Arabic did not borrow this word from Turkish. You can be pretty sure any word existing in the Qur'an/Hadith is not a borrowing from Turkish, since Arabs never even came into contact with Turks by this time.



ancalimon said:


> is another name of God meaning "show the right thing, true way".


 
Huda is not a name of God. Huda means guidance. al-haadi is a name of God based on this root though.


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## ancalimon

Abu Rashid said:


> One begins with ه the other begins with خ. Very different phonemes. In modern Turkish spelling I think ه, ح & خ all get transliterated as 'h' though, so that's probably the source of your confusion. And in old Persian, which is where I believe this word originates, it is not even 'kh' but 'k', and was pronounced kuwdy.
> 
> 
> 
> Arabic did not borrow this word from Turkish. You can be pretty sure any word existing in the Qur'an/Hadith is not a borrowing from Turkish, since Arabs never even came into contact with Turks by this time.
> 
> 
> 
> Huda is not a name of God. Huda means guidance. al-haadi is a name of God based on this root though.



1-) Turkic "kut" is not spelled starting with a kh or h.  Still K KH H are easily interchangable (is this the right definition?) even among people speaking the same language and even same dialect.
2-) I didn't mean Arabs borrowed the word From Turkish people. I said it's an Arabic word borrowed by the Turkish people   But we can not know whether Arabs did not contact Turkic speaking people by that time.
3-) There are 101 aspects of Gods in Mongolian culture. Much less in Turkic culture, I guess there was influence from many different religions in ancient times.  One of them is "kut". You can also say that it means "guidance of Tengri" in Turkic culture. I'm not saying Arabic "huda" could be related with this word. I'm saying that Persian "khudai" could be of Turkic origin and "maybe" through Persian it could have entered Arabic changing a little since Turks are regarded as stationary in one place in history until they suddenly start moving under different names. Or the word could simply be a loan from Scythians who consisted of both Persians (the nomadic Persians that were enemies of sedentery Persians) and Turks, Kıpchaks..

I know AL makes the word specific. But Turkic does not usually have that AL in front of loan words.


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## Abu Rashid

ancalimon said:


> 1-) Turkic "kut" is not spelled starting with a kh or h.  Still K KH H are easily interchangable (is this the right definition?) even among people speaking the same language and even same dialect.



Right, so clearly no link to huda.



ancalimon said:


> 2-) I didn't mean Arabs borrowed the word From Turkish people. I said it's an Arabic word borrowed by the Turkish people



Ok, my mistake then.



ancalimon said:


> But we can not know whether Arabs did not contact Turkic speaking people by that time.



I think it's highly unlikely, since a) they were thousands of km apart and b) they're not mentioned in any Arabic texts or even by the other peoples of the region.



ancalimon said:


> I know AL makes the word specific. But Turkic does not usually have that AL in front of loan words.



Still huda does not refer to God in Arabic/Islam.


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## CyrusSH

It is a good Persian article about the etymology of _xoda_: ریشه شناسی کلمه خدا www.tebyan-zn.ir It says the best thing which can be said about this word is that it means nothing but "god" in Persian and it has probably the same origin of English _god_. Of course it also mentions a possible relation between the Persian words for "god" and "good", in Persian _hu_/_xub_ and *huda* mean "good", and other than _xoda_, _xadiv_ also means "lord, god", it says it is possible that the original meaning of the Persian word for god was "good div" (the word _div_ is actually from the common Indo-European word for god), the reason for using this word could be that ancient Iranians had a dualistic religion.


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## PersoLatin

I don't think it can be disputed that the xwad- of Persian xwadây, means anything other than _self_, and in my view that's where its etymology is. xwadây must have been 'someone who decides, or is in charge, by her/him*self*', in MP xwadây primarily means lord, master, owner and the development of xwadây to mean _god,_ may be later in MP or even only in NP.

MP examples:
xwadâywâr = lordly
xwadâyih = lordship, sovereignty
kadag-xwadây= master of the house, householder
duŝ-xwadâyih = misrule
kâmag-xwadây (kâmgar) = absolute
as well as:


BP. said:


> I don't think _khudaa _is only reserved for God in language. We have _naa khuda_a (captain of a ship) i.e. *naau+khodaa*, which I feel means 'lord of the boat'.



.


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## CyrusSH

PersoLatin said:


> I don't think it can be disputed that the xwad- of Persian xwadây, means anything other than _self_, and in my view that's where its etymology is. xwadây must have been 'someone who decides, or is in charge, by her/him*self*', in MP xwadây primarily means lord, master, owner and the development of xwadây to mean _god,_ may be later in MP or even only in NP.
> 
> MP examples:
> xwadâywâr = lordly
> xwadâyih = lordship, sovereignty
> kadag-xwadây= master of the house, householder
> duŝ-xwadâyih = misrule
> kâmag-xwadây (kâmgar) = absolute
> as well as:
> .



Please read the article that I posted above.



> معنی کردن خدا به خودآی را بهتر آن است که به قول اهل ادب بیشتر یک حُسن تعلیل بدانیم تا یک واقعیت. اینان میگویند اصولاً نباید و نشاید که در واژه‌های قدیمی به دنبال معنایی در زبان نزدیک بگردیم و آن را به عنوان حرف آخر بپذیریم. نوعاً این طور ریشه یابی واژه ها، یعنی تعریف به نزدیک‌ترین معنایی که به ذهن یک فارسی زبان امروزی میرسد، ناشی از عدم آگاهی عمیق به مبحث زبان شناسی و ریشه شناسی و کار افراد غیرمتخصص در این رشته است.


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## PersoLatin

I did & I hope you have as well. I think what they say is no different to what I said. They say the â ending shouldn't be interpreted as a derivative of آمدن and I agree with that. I don't know which part of my post you disagree with.


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## CyrusSH

PersoLatin said:


> I did & I hope you have as well. I think what they say is no different to what I said. They say the â ending shouldn't be interpreted as a derivative of آمدن and I agree with that. I don't know which part of my post you disagree with.



The problem is that you just want to find a meaning for the very Iranian word for "god" in just the Persian language, whenas from Kurdish and Ossetian to Pashto and Ishkashimi, by considering sound changes in the Iranian languages, _xuda_ means the same. As you read in the article we should find an Indo-European origin for the word _xuda_, not a meaning in a specific language.


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## PersoLatin

CyrusSH said:


> As you read in the article we should find an Indo-European origin for the word _xuda_, not a meaning in a specific language.


I thought it was already known as: PIE *s(u)w-o- "one's own," from root *s(w)e


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## CyrusSH

PersoLatin said:


> I thought it was already known as: PIE *s(u)w-o- "one's own," from root *s(w)e



From this PIE root, there is Ossetic _xi_, how _xutsau_, the Ossetic word for "god", can be related to it?


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## PersoLatin

There were many words for god in MP but xwadây is not one of them. My theory is that, this sense of _god_ is a later development, it is likely other Iranic languages borrowed xwadây, after it developed the meaning of god in one of the Persian languages.


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## CyrusSH

Lugubert said:


> Steingass' Persian dictionary thinks from _khwud _= self and _ay _= coming, and adds "according to others related to S[anskrit] _sva-datta_ = self-given, i.e. self-created"
> 
> God seems to have the root _gheu _"to call, invoke". (The American Heritage dictionary of Indo-European Roots.)
> 
> I find it difficult to believe in a common ancestor.



Persian _xwaday_ could be also from the Persian verb *xwahidan* "to invoke" معنی خواهیدن | لغت‌نامه دهخدا


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## desi4life

I don't see how the word *khudaa *could have the same origin as the word *God*. Online Etymological Dictionary says the following about *khedive*, which is derived from *khudaa*:

Turkish viceroy of Egypt, 1867, from French khédive, from Turkish khidiv, from Persian khidiw "prince," derivative of khuda "master, prince," from Old Persian khvadata- "lord," from compound *khvat-data-, literally "created from oneself," from khvat- (from PIE *swe-tos "from oneself," ablative of root *s(w)e- ; see idiom ) + data- "created."


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## fdb

Actually, Persian xidēw is a loan from Bactrian χοαδηο. "Etymonline" is hopeless for this sort of thing.


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## desi4life

fdb said:


> Actually, Persian xidēw is a loan from Bactrian χοαδηο. "Etymonline" is hopeless for this sort of thing.



Thanks. Are the Old Iranian and PIE forms correctly given?


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## fdb

Only xwa- and *swe- are correct. "Old Persian khvadata-" is rubbish.


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## desi4life

Meanwhile, per Watkins, God is from the PIE root _*g̑heu(h2/3)_- 'to call, invoke' or from _*g̑heu-_ 'to pour, libate'.


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## CyrusSH

PersoLatin said:


> There were many words for god in MP but xwadây is not one of them. My theory is that, this sense of _god_ is a later development, it is likely other Iranic languages borrowed xwadây, after it developed the meaning of god in one of the Persian languages.



There were not many words for god in Middle Persian, I think you mean many names and attributes of God, of course it can be true that _xuda_ is probably not the original Persian word for god, in the Old Persian the word _bag_ was used for god, in the early Middle Persian inscriptions the same word was used but we see in a trilingual inscription of Ardashir I (founder of Sassanid empire), the word for god in  Persian is _bag_, Parthian _xwaday_ and Greek _θεός_. It probably shows Persians adopted this word from Parthians.


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## Artaxerxes I

So what is now the oldiranian predecessor of the term Np. xodā(y) - "god" < Mp. xwadāy - "lord"?

I was convinced, that it is related to Av. xᵛaδāta - „founded on himself, stable“;who rules according to his own laws“ (Op. *(H)uvadāta, Ved. svá-dhita), consisting of the adjective xᵛa - "self, own" (Op. (h)uva, Ved. svá) and δāta, the past participle of the verbal root dā - „to set in, to appoint, to arrange, to create“.

But someone i know challenged this etymology and proposed instead oldiran.*xva-tāwan- "powerful (tawān) by itself" as the origin. He also told me that Nyberg rather thoght of *xvata-āya-  "self-living".

So which one of these is the most credible etymology of the term xodā(y)?


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## Treaty

Is there an instance of OIr. -_t_(_a_) > MP _y _and initial OIr. _d_ > MP _t_ that we can use as support for _xᵛaδāta _(or the like) > _xwatāy_? Ito, here, mentions two different formations of "self-able". The MP _xwatāy _would possibly be from the SW Ir. without -_an_. But again, unless the meaning was totally forgotten, can we explain _t_ > _d_ in NP (as in all cases I know, _t_ of _tav_- is preserved in NP)?


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