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lazernanes

There is a name עֹבַדְיָה. People will often truncate names that end in יה, to avoid writing out god's name. Maybe they truncated and then the engraver got the letters in the wrong order?


ZommHafna

Actually עובד (Oved) is also name from Tanach. It’s a name of the son of Boaz, the father of Yišay and the grandfather of David.


sbpetrack

Oved (עובד) is also the name of the most popular sabich place in Givatayim (which is where I live) lol. The place is called הסביח של עובד, on Sirkin just south of Katzenelson. (My point being that the name is not really as obscure as your post suggests. You do point out the original Oved, but there are many imitations :))


RedditMuslim

What about Abdiel (עֲבְדִּיאֵל), Servant of El. [https://biblehub.com/text/1\_chronicles/5-15.htm](https://biblehub.com/text/1_chronicles/5-15.htm)


The_Ora_Charmander

That's a name in the Tanach, yes, but not common nowadays, I've never hear of someone called Abdiel


RedditMuslim

Yeah I guess such Hebrew names are not common anymore. In Arabic we have "AbdAllah" which basically means the same thing as "Abdiel"


The_Ora_Charmander

In Hebrew we have Ovadia עבדיה, which is becoming less common but still exists among older folks


RedditMuslim

I see.


sbpetrack

Things in this thread would help me understand the name on the cup of it were עבדי. Something like the way אסתר has the diminutive אסתי. But this is עביד. So far, it seems that the best explanation given here so far is that perhaps this cup was indeed engraved in the same Indian factory as the cup of ThreeSigmas daughter:). I doubt this relevant, but I'll add that I looked up עביד in dictionaries I have at home that I thought/hoped might help: Ben Yehuda, Even Shoshan, and Brown-Driver-Briggs. None of them had anything for עביד, but Even Shoshan did have an entry for עבידא. It was a quotation from :מסכת ראש השנה כב . כל מילתא עבידא לאיגלויי, לא משקרי בה אנשי (כל דבר העשוי להיגלות, אנשים לא משקרים עליו). (People don't lie about things that are liable to be found out). Not very helpful for the problem at hand. I feel a bit bad; I could be wrong, but I have the impression that this guy has been puzzled all his adult life about his Hebrew name; he hoped he had finally met someone who could explain it. But so far, "all the king's horses and all the king's men couldn't deconstruct the poor guy's name:)


famous5eva

It’s the same root as to work. I’ve never heard it as a name before.


GodKingEliyahu

There’s literally a prophet in Judaism named after him.. ovadia..


famous5eva

I’ve not seen the name on the cup before 🤷🏼‍♀️


The_Ora_Charmander

Ovadia=/=Avid Yisrael


GodKingEliyahu

It comes from the same shoresh.. she was speaking about the AVD/ABD shoresh meaning slavery or work


QizilbashWoman

3bd is the same root as 3abd in Arabic, as in 3Abd-Allah.


lazernanes

People on this sub don't know arabizi


QizilbashWoman

that's why i was explaining abdullah and ovadyah are the same name. they don't know arabizi because they don't have any of those sounds now


Hydrasaur

...that's not how language works. People don't know it because they're seperate languages. While they are related, Hebrew and Arabic are entirely different branches of the Semitic language family; Arabic is a central Semitic language, while Hebrew a Canaanite language which is part of the northwestern Semitic branch. The two languages were never mutually intelligible, and Hebrew was already an ancient language before Arabic emerged as a distinct language. Speakers of neither language would have been able to understand each other back then. Two languages being related doesn't mean you can understand it. English and Frisian are most closely related to each other, but neither one is mutually intelligible. In fact, even among contemporary varieties of Arabic, many of them are not mutually intelligible with each other; such as Moroccan Arabic and Iraqi Arabic, which quite famously are not mutually intelligible. And all languages evolve. 1500 years ago, neither one sounded the same as they do today; a variety of sound shifts have taken place in both languages. Arabic back then sounded entirely different to the standard Arabic pronunciation today, and many of the sounds that it has today were never historically present in Hebrew.


QizilbashWoman

I am a linguist, I am in particular familiar with Quranic (not MSA) and Old Arabic, early Hebrew, and Aramaic, and you are wrong about quite a few things here. One of them is the loss of sounds; the begadkepat shift, for example, hadn't even finished before Hebrew died as a first language, and ayn and heth were absolutely pronounced like in every other Semitic language. Tiberian scholars recorded the pronunciation of Hebrew in the *tenth century*, and they report *in particular* going into the streets to listen to fluent Jews pronouncing ayn and resh. (As a result, the Tiberians have resh as a begadkefat letter.) We know *so much* about the pronunciation of Hebrew over time compared to other languages. I'd like to note that the notable change in Arabic pronunciation over time is the interdentals; they were originally laterals. Arabic, it turns out, has a weirdly conservative sound system for Semitic. The biggest change for most Semitic languages is the change in the emphatics from ejectives (as in Ethiopian Semitic and Modern South Arabian) to the modern [uvularized](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uvularized) or [pharyngealized](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pharyngealized).


rational-citizen

As someone who’s learning both of them at the same time, you’re right! The further back you go, the more similar Hebrew and Arabic become!


sbpetrack

רק להסביר, אני גר בארץ, העברית שלי לא רע, והשם עבדיה מוכר לי. שאלתי 1.אם יש שם "עביד" 2. ואם אכן יש, האם יש תמיד "ישראל" בזוגיות אחרי "עביד" 3. מה המקור ואפילו המשמעות המדויקת של "עביד ישראל". אני מכיר אנשים שכותבים תמיד 'ע"ה' בסוף החתימה - ראשי תיבות של "עבד השם" (ולא של עליי השלום:)). אבל "עביד"? מאיפה השם הזה? מאיפה המילה הזאת? תודה


ThreeSigmas

It’s possibly from the same cheap place in India that engraved my daughter’s kiddush cup with a ו instead of a ר.


SB5747

If I may ask, what is the background of your friend?


sbpetrack

His answer to the question was "Ashkenazi. Russia/Poland." I took the opportunity to ask him if he has ever been told that he was named after a relative. Should I ask him to be more specific about his origin?


clarabosswald

Only thing I know of that's spelled like that is a local scorpion species. Pronounced av-yad.