The Taymanitic onomasticon

Abstract

The Taymanitic inscriptions, written in the c. mid-sixth century BCE, largely consist of personal names. While personal names cannot inform us directly on the language or ethnicity of their bearers, name-giving practices do reflect a choice made by the person bestowing it on someone. This article will focus on the personal names of the inscriptions; what they can tell us about their linguistic and cultural background, and how this might inform us on the cultural heritage of the authors of the Taymanitic inscriptions.

What can Nabataean Aramaic tell us about Pre‐Islamic Arabic?

“…Classical Arabic taymāʾ . The spelling tymʾ occurs in one of the later inscriptions just mentioned (Stiehl, 1970), but we cannot be sure whether this shows the * ‐āy‐ to * ‐āʾ‐ shift at work or whether this reflects the normal and well‐attested Aramaic (and Taymanitic, tmʾ ; Kootstra, 2016, p. 131) form of the name.…”

“…Many of the languages written in these scripts are too poorly attested or understood to establish their exact relationship with other Semitic languages. Of the rest, Taymanitic apparently shares some features with Northwest Semitic languages like Aramaic and Canaanite (Kootstra, 2016), Dadanitic shares some features with what is generally recognised as Arabic, and especially Safaitic and Hismaic are quite close to it (Al-Jallad, 2018b). Macdonald (2000Macdonald ( , pp.…”

Water installations and transhumance in four new Safaitic inscriptions from Birak al‐Wisād

“…ʾns 1 also appears in two Taymanitc inscriptions. Kootstra translates it in TM.T.024 and Kim CIMG 0759 as “mankind” (2016: 125). ʾns 1 also occurs in ASFF 229, KRS 1179 and KRS 3074, but the editors of the three inscriptions left it without translation.…”