{"id":75048,"date":"2019-06-15T00:09:39","date_gmt":"2019-06-15T06:09:39","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/admin.patheos.com\/blogs\/danpeterson\/?p=75048"},"modified":"2019-06-15T00:09:39","modified_gmt":"2019-06-15T06:09:39","slug":"in-which-i-indulge-my-weird-fascination-with-etymologies","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/danpeterson\/2019\/06\/in-which-i-indulge-my-weird-fascination-with-etymologies.html","title":{"rendered":"In which I indulge my weird fascination with etymologies"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"Peruvian<\/a>
A coastal view in Lima, Peru (Wikimedia Commons public domain photo)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

As we went through the \u201cControl de Aduanas\u201d just now, I couldn\u2019t help but think about the etymology of the word aduana<\/em> (\u201ccustoms\u201d).<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

Like its French equivalent (douane<\/em>), it derives from the Arabic diwan<\/em> (or, perhaps better, diwaan<\/em>), which means a \u201cregistry\u201d or even an \u201canthology.\u201d \u00a0A poet\u2019s collected work is gatherd into a diwan<\/em>. \u00a0 So, for example, there is a diwan of the poems of Abu Nuwas, and one of al-Mutanabbi, and etc. \u00a0The great German poet Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, enchanted by \u201cthe East\u201d and not to be outdone, wrote a \u201cWest-\u00f6stlicher Divan\u201d (typically rendered as \u201cWest-Eastern Divan\u201d) in twelve books. \u00a0In the Arabic translation of 1 Nephi, when Nephi makes an account of his life, the text uses a form of the verb dawwana<\/em>, \u201cto make a list or a registry.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

So why does a common Western word for \u201ccustoms,\u201d in the sense of a kind of border police, derive from Arabic? \u00a0Off the top of my head, I don\u2019t really know.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

But here\u2019s a curious fact: \u00a0Arabic doesn\u2019t<\/em> use any form of diwan<\/em> or of the triliteral root d-w-n<\/em> for \u201ccustoms.\u201d \u00a0Rather, it uses the ugly Orcish-sounding word gumruk<\/em> \u2014 which descends from the Latin term commercium<\/em>. \u00a0(Drop off the final -ium<\/em> and you\u2019re left with commerc<\/em>, which, when you pronounce it with the original hard \u201cc\u201d of Latin, effectively a \u201ck,\u201d sounds quite like gumruk<\/em>.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

So here\u2019s my not entirely serious but also not entirely unserious suggestion for why Europeans and Arabs both derived the word for \u201ccustoms\u201d from their enemies: \u00a0Everybody hates customs and everybody resents meddling and inhospitable police at border crossings.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

I still recall a passage from the memoirs of the great twelfth-century traveler Ibn Jubayr, where he watches Egyptian customs officials rifling through his luggage and stealing from it right in front of him. \u00a0Surely, he remarks, if the great Sultan Salah al-Din, Saladin, had been present, that illustrious warrior would have put an end to such corruption. \u00a0(I agree. \u00a0Salah al-Din is one of my heroes too, as he was one of Dante\u2019s.)<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

An irritating memory: \u00a0Somebody in Egyptian customs stole volumes 2 and 4 of my four-volume Arabic edition of the Thousand and One Nights<\/em> \u2014 which irritated me more, in an odd way, than if he had simply stolen all four volumes. \u00a0Why leave me volumes 1 and 3? \u00a0Just to infuriate me?<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

A final note on diwan<\/em>. \u00a0It\u2019s the same Arabic word (\u201cregistry\u201d) from which derives the name of the piece of furniture that we know as a \u201cdivan.\u201d \u00a0Such couch-like items were common in the medieval and early modern Middle East, particularly (pronounced as divan<\/em>) in Persian and Ottoman Turkish government offices where documents were processed.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

Posted from Lima, Peru<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u00a0 \u00a0 As we went through the \u201cControl de Aduanas\u201d just now, I couldn\u2019t help but think about the etymology of the word aduana (\u201ccustoms\u201d). \u00a0 Like its French equivalent (douane), it derives from the Arabic diwan (or, perhaps better, diwaan), which means a \u201cregistry\u201d or even an \u201canthology.\u201d \u00a0A poet\u2019s collected work is gatherd […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1019,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-75048","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\nIn which I indulge my weird fascination with etymologies<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"    As we went through the "Control de Aduanas" just now, I couldn't help but think about the etymology of the word aduana ("customs").  \" \/>\n<meta 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