Bibliotheca Polyglotta

Etymology obscure. Unless simply a specialisation of the homonymous ḫābūr ‘(a plant, or tree, perh.) elder-tree (or spartium)’, a borrowing from Akk ḫabburu ‘(green) shoot, stalk’ (in itself a loanword) does not seem impossible, though not very likely, given that the modern value ‘peg, pin, wedge’ is attested only very late and there are no Aram cognates. Is it perhaps a representative of the other value that the root ḪBR can take in Sem, namely ‘to assemble, join, associate’? From a semantic perspective, this would seem difficult to explain.

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▪ No obvious cognates in Sem. But cf. DISC below and items/roots referred to there.

▪ The value ‘cotter, peg, pin, wedge’ is not found in the usual dictionaries of ClassAr (Freytag1830, Kazimirski, Lane, BustānīMuḥīṭ); there, ḫābūr is only ‘a certain plant’ (Freytag1830), a tree (Bustānī), identified however by Hava1899 as ‘elder-tree’ and by DRS (in MġrAr) as ‘genêt d’Espagne’ (see ḪBR_14 s.v. ↗ḪBR). The fāʕūl form would suggest that we are dealing with a loanword, but the source remains obscure so far. Should we assume Akk (lBab, neoBab) ḫabburu (var. ḫaburru, ḫabūru ḫabbaru) ‘(green) shoot, stalk’ (CAD), in itself a Sum (?) loanword,¹ to be the etymon? A direct loan cannot per se be excluded, but a borrowing via Aram would be more common. However, given that the word is not mentioned in ClassAr dictionaries and only seems to appear at a rather late stage in the history of the language would make us doubt the Akk hypothesis. The item is neither mentioned by Fraenkel1886 nor Zimmern1914. The first attestation found so far is in Hava1899, where it is said to be LevAr. But, as evidenced by BadawiHinds1986, it is also an EgAr item: ḫā̆būr (pl. ḫawā̆bīr) ‘wedge, wooden peg or plug’;² and both WehrCowan1979 and Baalbaki1995 (al-Mawrid) list it as a MSA item. If Akk ḫabburu ‘(green) shoot, stalk’ should have to be excluded and if the meaning ‘peg, pin, wedge’ is not just a development, however unlikely, from the homonymous ḫābūr ‘certain plant, elder-tree, spartium’ (see above) (*used as peg, pin, wedge?), should we then assume a relation to Sem ḪBR (DRS #ḪBR-1) ‘to assemble, join, connect, associate’?³ Rather unlikely either. Hbr ḥābûr, which would be the closest item phonologically, means ‘attached, joined, connected’ (accord. to Klein1987 a PP of ḥāḇar ‘to be united, be joined’);⁴ so, if this is the etymon then the ‘peg, pin, wedge’ would originally be *‘the joining/joined one’ – not very convincing!
▪ According to PayneSmith1879 and BDB1906 there is also a n.pr.fl., Ar ḫābūr, Hbr ḥāḇûr, Syr ḥâbûr, ḥâbûrâ, Grk Xabṓras, which are from Akk ḫubur ~ ḫabur ‘place of the river ordeal; (the river of the) nether world’, which (accord. to CAD) is a Sum loanword. A connection with ‘peg, pin, wedge’ can probably be excluded.

1. Cf. Sum ^(gi)ḫenbur ₍₂₎: ‘(green) shoot, stalk’ (ḫe ‘abundant’, + in ‘discrete individuals’, + buru ₁₄ / bur ₁₄ ‘harvest’ – Halloran3.0. 2. Cf. also the EgAr expression ḫā̆būr miġarrī̆ ‘(1) nasty trick, (2) tight spot, nasty situation’. 3. On this Sem ḪBR, DRS 10 (2012)#ḪBR-1 says: »Le rapprochement avec la racine ḤBR, s’il est retenu, pourrait fournir un exemple de Akk Ḫ provenant de Can Ḥ, voir sous Ḫ, si on considère, comme semble le faire SodenAHW, qu’il s’agit d’un emprunt. Mais il peut s’agir aussi d’une racine à alternance de la première radicale, si les correspondances sémantiques entre les diverses valeurs dans les diverses branches paraissent vraisemblables. – Le sens de l’Akk suscite des discussions sur lesquelles voir CAD 6/7. – Outside Sem: (Eg) Demot ḫbr ‘ami’ est un emprunt au Can, voir Vycichl DELC 257. 4. Cf. also ḥibbēr (vn. D-stem, caus.) ‘to join, connect’, pBiblHbr ḥibbûr (vn. D-stem, caus.) ‘connection’ and, outside Hbr, also Phoen ḥbr ‘associate’, Syr ḥᵃḇar ‘to be(come) united’, ḥabbēr ‘to bind, tie’, […] Gz ḫabara ‘to join, be an associate’, Akk ebēru ‘to unite’, ebru ‘associate’, SAr tḥbr ‘to get united’ – Klein1987.

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