Reply
Fri 21 Apr, 2006 12:07 pm
Suri? It baffles Hebrew speakers
From the Associated Press
April 21, 2006
JERUSALEM ?- Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes' choice of a Hebrew-flavored name for their newborn daughter has speakers of the language scratching their heads.
Baby Suri's name can be traced to a Hebrew word meaning "princess" or "noblewoman," but by such a circuitous route that the connection is lost on most Israelis. Since the birth Tuesday in L.A., bemused Israeli TV and radio presenters have debated the word's origins.
"Nobody here has ever really heard of it," an announcer on Israel's Army Radio said during a discussion Thursday. The Yediot Ahronot newspaper agreed in its report on the celebrity birth.
Cruise's publicist said Tuesday that the name has its origins in Hebrew meaning "princess" or in Persian meaning "red rose."
Avshalom Koor, who has for years presented TV and radio spots on the intricacies of Hebrew, said "Suri" is a derivation of Sarah ?- the name of Biblical patriarch Abraham's wife ?- as pronounced by some Central European Jews.
"Suri is a pet name for Sarah," Koor told Army Radio. "The Ashkenazi [Jews] of Poland and Hungary pronounce it Suri."
LA Times
Cruise's publicist is linguistically confused. Persian -- or Farsi, as it is usually known -- is an Indo-European language. Hebrew is a Semitic language. The two have zip in common. The Hebrew word for rose, I believe, is 'shana' or 'shahana.' I have no idea what the word for 'princess' is.
sarai - my princess
sarah - princess
( or so i believe)
No, no, I don't think they were trying to say Farsi and Hebrew are related. I think they were saying that they're sort of interlanguage homonyms; eg, a word "suri" happens to exist in both languages, with different meanings. I read that "suri" also has some humorous negative meaning in Japanese, for example. I'll have to look up what it was...
Suri means pickpocket in Japanese, apparently.
And just when my opinion of Tom Cruise couldn't get any lower...
http://www.sky.com/showbiz/article/0,,50001-1219307,00.html
Merry Andrew wrote:Cruise's publicist is linguistically confused. Persian -- or Farsi, as it is usually known -- is an Indo-European language. Hebrew is a Semitic language. The two have zip in common. The Hebrew word for rose, I believe, is 'shana' or 'shahana.' I have no idea what the word for 'princess' is.
Rose - "Shoshana"
And I don't know where they got that Suri thing, because I have never heard that word in Hebrew.
I once worked with an orthodox Jewish woman named Suri.
Merry Andrew wrote:Cruise's publicist is linguistically confused. Persian -- or Farsi, as it is usually known -- is an Indo-European language. Hebrew is a Semitic language. The two have zip in common. The Hebrew word for rose, I believe, is 'shana' or 'shahana.' I have no idea what the word for 'princess' is.
These languages have different roots, surely, but what happens is that these languages become fused by their speakers as, for example, Hebrews who lived in Persia mixed Hebrew and Farsi. The dialect is referred to as Judaic Persian. I don't know what its speakers call, or called it. The same process occurred among the Ashkenazim in Central and Eastern Europe. The dialect that was generated is Yiddish.
Stumble It!
Tweet This
Bookmark on Delicious
Share on Facebook
Share on MySpace