E 0715          RAVEN

The birdname "raven" is of Germanic origin .

H 0176            ב ר ע

Concept of root : raven

Hebrew word

pronunciation

English meanings

ב ר ע

‛orev

raven

Related English words

raven

Comparison between European words and Hebrew

Languages

Words

Pronunciation

English meanings

Similarity in roots

Hebrew

ב ר ע

‛orev

raven

   ‛a r . v

Old Norse

hrafn

hrafn

raven

 hr .f

Urnorsk

harabanar

harabanar

raven-man

 h.r .b

Old Saxon

*hravan

hravan

raven

 r . v

Old English

hräfn

hrefn

raven

 hr .f

English

raven

raven

 r . v

German

Rabe

rabe

raven

 r . b

Middle-Dutch

rave(n)

rave(n)

raven

 r . v

Old High-German

hraban

hraban

raven

    h r . b

 

 

Proto-Semitic *‛OREV --- *HARAB Proto-Germanic

 

 

Hebrew has added an initial vowel to the common root. Subsequently it has reinforced the pronunciation using an Ayin. In older Germanic we see the guttural expiration "H" as a sort of counterpart of the guttural stop in Hebrew "Ayin", but in this case the "H" cannot be considered part of an original root. The second consonant, B or V, varies according to the rules of pronunciation of the B in each language. This word in Hebrew is frequently spelled with a Waw after the Ayin.

 

 

Note:
  • Two vowels or one ? Within roots that consist of three consonants, one usually sees that Semitic languages use two vowels, whereas Indo-European languages, in particular Germanic, uses only one vowel. This entry shows an old Nordic word that is very interesting, as it shows the use of two vowels, the Semitic way : "*HARAB" < "HARABAR". This "*HARAB" soon became "HRAB".

 

Note:
  • Proto-Semitic. This Hebrew word is also spelled "ע ו ר ב, ‛orev". Proto-Semitic probably used the root that is later found in Hebrew. It is seen in Aramaic and Syriac and has cognates in Akkadian "aribu" and Arabic "ghurab" with the same meaning of "raven", also "crow". Arabic sometimes has a root that begins with "GH" where Hebrew and others have an "Ayin". So also in this case with the word "ghurāb = raven " . Proto-Semitic probably used this root " *ע ר ב Ayin R B" .

 

Note:
  • Proto-Germanic. The initial "H" in front of the "R" is a typical development within Germanic, that has not resisted in time and has disappeared again , with the exception of Icelandic "hrafn", already existing in Old Icelandic and Old Norse. Old Icelandic, spoken by Norwegian settlers, was as good as identical to Old Norse. On the continent especially Danish domination has influenced the language, though recently there is a partial return to what is now defined as Nynorsk. In the specific case of the raven Nynorsk chose to maintain the popular name "ramn", different from official Norwegian and Danish "ravn".

     

    Old High German shows rather clearly this development of losing again the "H", having both versions during centuries : (h)ram, (h)raban, (h)rabo, (h)rappo), from ca 700 until 1200 e.v.. Middle High German after "rabe, rap, rappe" cleared the road for "raben" that became modern German. Interesting is that in this way the original "B" was restored. A consonant "B" that in Hebrew as well as in several Germanic languages became pronounced "V" or even "F" or melted with the following "N" into "M". In Old English we find "hræfn, hræfen, hræmn, hræm", all with "HR", but also already "ræfen" and "ræm", a confirmation of the Old High German development.

     

    Regarding the second consonant it is also important to have a better look at the Urnorsk word "harabanar = raven-man" a word shaped like the non-existing English "*ravener" would be. We see there an initial "HA", which strongly recalls the Hebrew combination of the guttural Ayin with a vowel, as a prefix, in front of the basic root "R )A) B". But this may be just incidental. With this information we may suppose that the Germanic words for "raven" were preceded by a word with the basic form "*H A R A B-". It is still possible that already in Proto-Germanic the first "A" had been eliminated and the "B" became pronounced as "V", resulting in "*HR A VN-". Uncertain but less fundamental is if the newer versions without initial "H" already had a predecessor in Proto-Germanic, like "*R A VN-".

 

Note:
  • Indo-European. Latin has "corvus = raven" and "cornix = crow". Greek has "κοραξ, korax = raven, crow" and "κορωνη, koronè = crow". These words have cognates in many other Indo-European languages. Their common element "KOR" perhaps can be recognized in Germanic "ROK" that is found in names for a smaller black crow, that in English is called "rook". It is difficult to link these words in a convincing way to "raven".

     

    Consequently we have no information that would allow a hypothesis different from Proto-Germanic.

 

Note:
  • Sound imitation. We doubt very much that the name of the raven has been based on its sound. There is no real indication for this. New Icelandic ""skrafa= to make a grating sound" does not help at all, if one considers that originally, in Old Norse, this verb meant :"to talk, speak, chatter". Its sound is also rather far off the noun "hrafn". In the case of an important sister bird instead the imitation of its voice in its name is highly probable. We refer to the crow, German Kraehe, Dutch kraai. These names are related to English "cry" and more clearly to the equivalents "kraehen" and "kraaien" in German and Dutch. By the way, also in Hebrew the crow has such a kind of name : "qa’aq" . Hebrew has a root that is akin to English "to cry", but it has not used that root to name the crow.

 

 

 

 

 
Created: Tuesday 6 November 2007 at 22.30.54 Updated: 03/10/2012 at 15.31.29