ID … • Sw – • BP … • APD … • © SG | 15Feb2021
√MRS
Murcia (a city in Spain) – WehrCowan1979.
The Span name Murcia goes back to Ar mursiyaẗ, which is perhaps from Lat myrtea or murtea ‘land of myrtle’ (Lat murtus, from Grk mýrtos), or from the common Roman name Murtius, or from Lat mōrus ‘mulberry tree’ (as this tree covered the local landscape for many centuries, < Grk móron, mṓron) – en.wiki.
Dictionaries of Ar often treat mursiyaẗ under √RSW, explaining it as a place of ‘anchorage’. But if this were the case, then the form, an PA IV, is difficult to explain (*‘the one that makes you anchor, causes you to stop’?). It is more probable that the Ar name is borrowed from an indigenous place name. The modern Span name, however, seems to have evolved from the Ar one.
http://www2.hf.uio.no/common/apps/permlink/permlink.php?app=polyglotta&context=ctext&uid=da6d15ed-06ff-11ee-937a-005056a97067