Songdog was over here today and mentioned a Turkish-American friend whose given name was Ebru; intrigued, I looked it up and discovered that it means ‘ebru (marbled paper, handmade in a variety of styles by artisans using traditional techniques),’ with this surprising etymology:
From Ottoman Turkish ابرو (ebru), a clipping of Classical Persian ابر و باد (abr-u-bād, literally “cloud and wind”); earlier texts employ the simpler ابری (abri, literally “cloudy”), a term that is still in use.
I hope it’s true, because it’s very charming indeed. (You can see an example of the marbled paper at the link.)
See also the origin of “seersucker,” the cloth.
Seersucker originates from the Persian phrase shir o shakar, meaning “milk and sugar,” which describes the fabric’s alternating smooth (milk) and textured (sugar) stripes. The phrase was adopted into Hindi and then anglicized by British colonists in India to “seersucker,” a popular, lightweight, and breathable cotton textile frequently used for clothing in hot climates. (Google AI)
I thought of another term following this two-word pattern:
The phrase “dast o dellbaz” (دست و دلباز), which translates to “generous,” “open-handed,” or “liberal,” originates from Persian, specifically combining words for “hand” and “heart” to signify a person who gives freely without hesitation.
Dast (دست): Means “hand.” In this context, it refers to a hand that is open and not holding onto possessions.
Del/Dell (دل): Means “heart.” In Persian, the heart is considered the seat of emotions, desire, and personality, often functioning as a “container” for generosity.
Baz (باز): Means “open.”
The phrase Dast o Del-baz literally translates to “Open-hand and open-heart,” representing the concept that true generosity stems from a loving heart rather than just a giving hand.
Contextual Usage
It is used to describe someone who is free-spending or generous in sharing their wealth.
It is distinct from Delbar (دلبر), which means “beloved” or “heart-holder” (one who captures the heart). [from Google AI]
Seersucker is a great parallel — thanks!
That’s wonderful. Maybe it goes without saying that bād is cognate with its translation wind, while abr is a root cognate of German Nebel, etc.
It certainly doesn’t go without saying, and I thank you for saying it. Persian باد (bād) is from Middle Persian wād, from Old Persian *vātah, which apparently goes back to a Proto-Indo-Iranian *HwáHatas, from “Proto-Indo-European *h₂wéh₁-n̥t-os, from *h₂wéh₁n̥ts (‘wind’).” Not evident at first glance!
Persian باد (bād) is from Middle Persian wād
I learned about the sound shift from initial w- in Middle Persian to b- in New Persian from one of the citron threads.
Famously in narrow circles, Vedic vā́ta- actually scans – half the time – as váata- with three short syllables, stress on the first.
On the Germanic side, you need the three syllables to explain why Verner’s law applied. The main difference to IIr is that IIr turned *n̥ into a before losing the laryngeals, while Germanic lost them long before turning *n̥ into un (…though, I think, not as early as the paper quietly assumes).
I knew about ebru as a technique for making marbled paper, but not that it was used as a personal name.
Do we know that the word for marbled paper is the origin of the name, or could it be a coincidence like “Mark” and “mark”?
I found the story of wind and bad on wiktionary, but even after scratching around there, the relationship between nebel and abr is still, well, nebulous to me. Can someone explain the changes there?
Edited – nebulous does get me close, dead ending on the trip back up IIr at a no-link nabʰar-.
Where does the n drop out?
JF: Maybe it’s a Smith/smith situation?
Maybe. In SAE I believe that would be unusual for a given name except recently in English, but I have no idea about Turkish.
“Where does the n drop out?”
It doesn’t exactly drop, but rather the zero-grade *n̥bʰ-ló- or *n̥bʰ-ró- becomes PIIr. *abʰrá-. A really excessive number of vocalics merge as *ā̆ in IIr., including syllabic *n̥ — also seen in the wind-word.
(If anyone’s more familiar with the IPA than with Indo-Europeanist notation, NB that n̥ indicates a syllabic, not a voiceless, nasal. In the Indo-Europeanists’ defense, I’m pretty sure they got there first.)
Turkish given names are either Islamic (Mehmet, Ali, Hatice, Fatma, Zeynep, Recep Tayyip) or directly meaningful; the latter can be absolutely anything, like in Chinese. Tolğa “battle ax”, Ekin “wheat”, Cem “Alevite sanctuary”… Some of them are gender-neutral, but I don’t know what any of them mean (Ümit for example).
I wouldn’t know any Islamic source for Ebru; if it’s native, it has to be a compound because its vowels don’t harmonize, and that’s difficult (final -b isn’t an option, initial r- and initial br- aren’t native). “[Beautiful as] marbled paper” seems unremarkable to me as a Turkish given name.
@DM: Thanks, makes sense.
@dm
Re Ümid,
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Omid_(name)
For ebru, the sources I have seen also say Persian, BUT I do not see why Western Armenian “Yepruhi” is not cited as a(n ultimate) possibility, the “uhi” is a feminine ending in Armenian.
Nelson Goering: I actually read the Bulgarian translation of a part of the Bhagavad Gita, (which used the same diacritical conventions, but in Cyrillic) the same time I was learning IPA. So I am familiar with both conventions.
Ah!
The Y wouldn’t fall off in Turkish. “New” is yeni…
@PlasticPaddy, dm:
Not sure if this is relevant (I do not know enough about the phonological adaptation of Armenian loanwords in Turkish, nor have I reason to doubt the Persian etymology), but note that /jɛ/ is the Modern Armenian word-initial pronunciation of Classical Armenian /ɛ/ ե. Indeed, the Armenian name in question is spelled Եփրուհի Ep’rowhi (apparently the feminine of Եփրեմ Ep’rem “Ephrem”). So, I suppose it’s at least possible that its initial vowel would have been treated differently from native Turkish words in ye-.
Tolğa “battle ax”
Can ğ ever follow a consonant?
Wiktionary gives Tolga “a male given name which means ‘the rising or the war helmet'”. A battle ax seems a bit more believable though.
Ümit
Not to be confused with Ümmet, “ummah”, “the worldwide Muslim community.”
Google has enough search suggestions as soon as I enter tolğa, all of them looking like Turkish phrases, that it must be real…
tolğa çevik
tolğa sarıtaş nereli
tolğahan sayışman
tolğa karel
tolğa tekin
tolğa aykut
tolğa saraçoğlu [that one looks like a first + last name]
tolğa sarıtaş kaç yaşında
tolğa ciğerci
Nah, I don’t think so — I can’t find any evidence it’s a Turkish word. It’s an Old Turkish stem (tolğa- ‘to wind, twist’) and it may be a Kalmyk word.
Ah, that would explain a few things. Names of Turkic and Mongolic tribes are another source of given names in modern Turkey.