Bibliotheca Polyglotta

▪ Ultimately perh. identical with ^†¹silq ‘red garden-beet’ (^†SLQ_21 in root entry ↗√SLQ), as, botanically spoken, chard, the red garden-beet and other forms of beets all are varieties of the same plant, Beta vulgaris. Their name may go back (via Aram?) to Grk Σικελία ‘Sicily’ (with metathesis q-l > l-q), thus *‘the Sicilian (vegetable)’. But this is rather uncertain and not unproblematic (see DISC).
▪ Or should one assume a relation to Ar salǧam ‘turnip’, EgAr ‘rape’ (via Tu? from Pers šalġam ‘turnip, rape’)?
▪ A connection to one of the main values of √SLQ, ‘to lacerate, skin, peel off’, would be difficult to establish (*‘vegetable with wrinkles, like skin after whipping’?) and seems rather unlikely.
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▪ (If truely identical with ^†¹silq ‘red garden-beet’:) prob. borrowed from Aram Syr silqā ‘red garden-beet’, ultimately perh. (with metathesis) from Grk sikelós ‘Sicilian’, < Grk Σικελία ‘Sicily’ (Fraenkel1886, Dozy, et al.).
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▪ The remark, made in ar.wiki, that the plant, popular all over the Mediterranean, originally came from Sicily, makes it tempting to assume a relation to this island, although the Ar name of Sicily most often shows initial ṣ (Ṣiqilliyaẗ, Ṣiqilliyyaẗ) rather than s (Siqilliyyaẗ) (both from Grk Σικελία) and q-ll instead of l-q (result of metathesis?); moreover, one would have to explain the faʕl/fiʕl pattern that would be rather unusual if ‘chard’ originally was *‘the Sicilian (vegetable)’.
▪ For ^†¹silq ‘red garden-beet’ which, botanically, is almost identical with chard, Fraenkel (1886: 143) assumes an Aram provenience (cf. Syr silqā ‘garden-beet’) and a possible background (with metathesis) in Grk sikelós ‘Sicilian’ – see, e.g., Fraenkel1886, as also Dozy, s.v., where the author remarks that already »Théopraste dit que la variété blanche de la Beta vulgaris s’appelle sicilienne«.
▪ There are, however, also Ar salǧam ‘turnip’, EgAr ‘rape’, Tu şalgam, Arm šoġkam ‘do.’, which, accord. to Nişanyan_13Apr2015, all go back to Pers šalġam ‘turnip, rape’. Could also Ar salq~silq be akin to, or even derive, from this Pers word? Pers /ġ/ is often interpreted as /q/, and Ar /q/ frequently becomes /g/ in many dialects. WehrCowan1976, for instance, registers EgAr salǧ /salg/ as a variant of salq.
▪ Prob. unrelated to any of the otherwise main\basic values expressed by √SLQ, esp. ‘to lacerate the skin (with a whip), to loosen the flesh from the bones, (hence also: *lay bare)’ (↗¹salaqa) and ‘to boil, cook in boiling water’ (↗³salaqa).
▪ sallaqa ‘to collect herbs’ (^†SLQ_19 in root entry ↗√SLQ) is prob. unrelated; it rather belongs to (?is denom. from) ^†²salīq ‘what falls off from trees (leaves, etc.)’ (^†SLQ_27, quasi-PP of ↗¹salaqa ‘to lacerate, skin, loosen the flesh from the bones, *lay bare’).
▪ The specifications silq al-barr ‘Rumex, sour-dock’ and silq al-māʔ ‘Potamogeton, pond-weed’ certainly belong here.
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For other values of the root, cf. ↗¹salaqa, ↗²salaqa, ↗³salaqa, ↗⁴salaqa, ↗⁵salaqa, ↗tasallaqa, ↗sullāq, ↗¹salīqaẗ, ↗²salīqaẗ, ↗salaqūn and ↗salūqī as well as, for the overall picture, root entry ↗√SLQ.

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