"raj" and "rosh" - any etymological connection?
“raj”, in Sanskrit and various other languages, means royalty, leader, kingdom, etc. It also appears to be an honorific in some Asian languages.
“Rosh” in Hebrew, means “head” as “primary” or “first” as in Rosh Hashanah (the ‘head of the year, New Year’s Day) or Rosh Hamemshalah (Head of Government). It’s also very closely related to the Arabic “Ras” in both sound and meaning.
And there is “roi”, French, for “king” or “royalty”, which was derived and descended from the Latin ‘rex”.
My question – is there an etymological connection between them? It seems to me that the similar in sound and meeting strongly suggests it, but I haven’t found anything that agrees with me. Possible?
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Awesome. I’m the most amateur linguist there is, and to that, I say, sure seems so!
It seems unlikely.
The Proto-Semitic root *raʾš is the source of “rosh” and the words meaning “head” in Semitic languages. The Proto-Indo-European root *h₃reg is source of the words for “king” and “rule” in Indo-European languages, hence “rex”, “regal”, “regular”, “roi”, “rey”, “raj”, “raja”, etc.
I don’t really see the ”š” from Semitic or the laryngeal from the IE having a common ancestor. The “r” is really the only sound the roots have in common and that could be chocked up to coincidence, especially since the meanings are not identical. It is interesting though :)
( Hey, Dom. Chalked up to…it is always interesting.)
^Right, that. Of course. :P Something I only heard people say; never really thought about how it was spelled.
@morphail GAs. Awesome links :)
Just wanted to add that predictable sound change patterns in IE can show how “hreg” becomes “rex” or “raj” or “right” or something like that.
“hreg-s”—> “regs”—> “rex”
“hreg-tos”—> “rehtaz”—> “reht”—> “right” (also “rectify”, etc.)
Showing those intermediate steps is how you’d prove that words are related. And steps like that work across many different words in the various languages and can become predictable. If that can’t be shown for certain words, it’s more likely that the similarities are coincidence.
~The same relationship between “raj” and “rosh” can also be seen between ”¡Hola!” and “Hollah!”
@gailcalled Oh, I thought hollah bread was the new soul food!
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