▪ (Huehnergard2011:) In Western langs, several words and many personal names go back to Ar
ʔab or its Hbr or Aram cognates.
▪ Directly from Ar
ʔabū (bound form of
ʔab ‘father’, also in the sense of ‘source’) are:
baobab, from NAfrAr
bū ḥibāb ‘tree (lit., father) of many seeds’;
borage, prob. from Ar
bū ʕaraq, short for
ʔabū ʕaraq ‘father of sweat’;
bwana, ultimately from Ar
ʔabūnā ‘our father’;
pataca, from Ar
ʔabū ṭāqaẗ, lit. ‘father of the window’, a type of coin.
▪ From Aram
ʔabbā ‘the father, my father’ (def. of
ʔab) are Engl
abba,
abbacy,
abbatial,
abbé,
abbess,
abbey, and
abbot.
▪ All Engl personal names that contain a ‘father’ element are from the Bible and thus of Hbr origin:
- With no suffixes, Hbr ʔāb (or reduced or dialectal forms) is in Abraham (Hbr ʔabrāhām ‘the [divine] father is exalted’), Job (Hbr ʔiyyôb, perh. from an early NWSem dialectal name meaning ‘Where is the father?’, from dialectal ʔôb, akin to Hbr ʔāb),1
Joab (Hbr yôʔāb ‘Yahweh is father’; for Yahweh cf. ↗√HWY), and Ahab (Hbr ʔaḥʔāb ‘father’s brother’; for Hbr ʔaḥ cf. Ar ↗ʔaḫ(ū) ‘brother’.
- With the 1sg.poss.suff. ‑ī, ʔăbî, the Hbr ʔāb is contained (in reduced/shortened forms) in Abigail (Hbr ʔăbîgayil ‘my father is joy’; ?cf. Ar ↗ǧīl) and Absalom (Hbr ʔabšālōm, short for ʔăbîšālōm ‘my father peace’; for Hbr šālōm cf. Ar ↗salām ‘peace’).