# Riyadh fr. Reg I Indo-European root.



## mojobadshah

Is Riyadh the capital of Saudi Arabia really derived from the IE root Reg I?.


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## Wolverine9

Why would you think Riyadh has any connection to IE?


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## mojobadshah

That's what Joseph Shipley has listed in the index of his etymology dictionary.  The Origins of English...


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## Treaty

Riyadh is said to be from روضه _rawḍah _(garden) that (according to Jeffery, 1938) is borrowed directly from M.Pers. _r_ō_d_ (= river(bed), akin Av. _raodh_, cf. N.Pers _rūd_). Of course, this etymology may be outdated.


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## mojobadshah

Interesting.  Who is more likely to be right.  Shipley or Jeffrey?


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## Treaty

Shipley seems to consider the naming of Riyadh via the influence of Spanish (or Portuguese?) the same influence as in the currency Rial. Also, He doesn't show where the final _dh_ comes from. Even if his suggestion is correct, it will be misleading to say Riyadh is derived from PIE *_reg_ as such claim may suggest a much older borrowing.


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## mojobadshah

Really?  So some of the words we think are PIE could actually be more ancient forms like Nostratic?


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## berndf

mojobadshah said:


> Really?  So some of the words we think are PIE could actually be more ancient forms like Nostratic?


He said exactly the opposite. _Riyadh _is derived from a much younger borrowing and it would therefore be misleading to state a PIE etymology.


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## mojobadshah

Yeah but essentially their saying Riyadh and Rial are are developed from the PIE root *reg I, or no?


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## berndf

No, he just said that there are paradigms for Spanish influence on Arabic.


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## Cenzontle

So, Treatyand berndf, who is "he"?  Jeffery?  Would that be Arthur Jeffery, _The Foreign Vocabulary of the Qurʼān _ ?
Can you say more about the alleged Spanish/Portuguese source words or "paradigms"?


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## berndf

My "he" is Treaty.


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## mojobadshah

Could the -dh be a more archaic form and have shifted to -l?


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## mojobadshah

I think d turns to l in Pashto.


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## fdb

Riyāḍ is the plural of rawḍa “garden”. Of course it has nothing to do with riyāl, which is from Spanish “real”.

Jeffery’s “Foreign vocabulary of the Qur’an” (1938) is an excellent book, but not everything he writes is correct. For the Qur’anic rawḍa Jeffery refers to an old theory by Vollers (1896) which derived this Arabic word from the Iranian root rud- : raud- “to grow”, Avestan raoδa- “growth” and raoδah- “river”, and Persian _r__ōd_ “river”. Actually these words are probably not connected: The Persian word is from Old Persian rautah- (with t), related to Skt. sravati “flows”, while the Avestan words all have /δ/. But more to the point: in early Arabic /ḍ/ ض   was not a kind of “d”, but a pharyngealised lateral. I do not know any other examples where Iranian /d/ or /δ/ is represented by /ḍ/ in early loanwords (/ḍ/ does stand for /d/ in some Turkish loanwords, but this is not relevant for early Arabic). rawḍa is more likely to come from the Arabic root r-w-ḍ “to tame an animal”; rawḍa would then be (at least originally) a park with tame animals and domesticated plants.


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