Ethiopic Entity Names

Entity names are nothing new for Ethiopic letters and symbols but they are not often utilized. The letter names are in all likelihood as old as the letters themselves and in many cases even older. Ge'ez language, the first Abyssinian language to adopt writing, with its original 26 member alphabet is often compared with other Semitic languages and scripts from the same period. In particular Hebrew notably shares the largest number of terms with classic Ge'ez as well as present day languages. Hebrew script with its 22 members also provides us with insight into the origins of the Ge'ez entity names, which we will see are often identical, or have a derivational relationship.

The Unicode definition for Ethiopic includes character names for Ethiopic elements based on transcriptions of the elements' phonetic value, or translations in the case of punctuation and numerals. These names are indeed useful identifiers and in many instances easier to work with than character codes. The Unicode names however were never intended for use as entity names as we see today in markup and other ASCII based document languages.

The motivation for deriving alternative entity names here is to produce a workable collection of names based on conventions from the character set's region of origin. The approach used is to construct a logical name in Ge'ez language first and to then transcribe the result into English. It is believed a naming scheme derived in this way will be more intuitive to software developers working with them on a day-to-day basis. It should also be noted before proceeding that the Ge'ez language plays an identical role in Eritrean and Ethiopian society, as does Latin for the Romance languages of Europe. Ge'ez is utilized in the same way by the sciences for the derivation of new terms in a way that is neutral to national and cultural boundaries. For these reasons Ge'ez is working language for the terminologies developed here.

Derivation of Names

For syllographic elements only the first syllable (or "form") of a series (which made up the original Ge'ez alphabet) are given proper names. As with other writing systems the names of the members evolved over time and experienced regional variations as well. In the present day there remains no consensus agreement on the element names, so our first task will be to come up with an average of some sort.

The approach used here is to come up with a weighted average where the terms recorded by Aba Gorgorios, a noted seventeenth century monk and savant, are selected first¹⁰. The Aba Gorgorios term is then abandoned in favor of another if the alternative term appears in four or more other references. Aba Gorgorios is given the most credibility for the combination of his stature in Ethiopian society and the age of his work being placed closer to the origin of the names themselves. While the Dillman reference cites even older names found in a translation of the New Testament in Rome, it is not given a greater weight as little else is known about the material by the present author⁶. Hebrew is shown in the following table only for comparison value and does not influence the outcome selection process.

Basic Ge'ez Letters

With our base names now available as a handy starting point we may simply derive entity names for the basic syllabary. In doing so we can borrow from the kindergarten practice of reciting the syllabary as per the character sound and form name: ለ-ግዕዝ፣ ሉ-ካዕብ፣ ሊ-ሣልስ ( le-ge'ez, lu-ka'ib, li-salis ... ). The form names translated have the meaning of "first", "second", "third" thru "seventh". In place of the characters' spoken value we can simply make the substitution for our base names.

Post Ge'ez Letters

Building upon the basic Ge'ez syllabary are additions made for the languages that followed as they adopted the writing system for their own use. Tesema Habte Michael offers ኻፍ as an entity name for the ኸ family and offers an approach for forming names for newer letters¹⁷. Accordingly, ቬት would become the name for the ቨ family by substituting ቬ for ቤ in ቤት from which the ቨ glyphs have been derived. Likewise ጘመል for the ጘ family, etc.

As the original entity names did themselves have literal meaning (ቤት is "house" and ገምል "camel" in our example^*), this approach is not preferred as it implies the derived forms would also be meaningful. Nor was selecting a representative term from the primary language of the extended letters as doing so would require the availability of a fair number of experts in the given languages to come to a consensus opinion.

The solution applied here was to keep the original names and prefix the corresponding syllable of the first letter to the base name. Hence ቬ-ቤት, ጘ-ገምል, etc. In this way the relationship between the new and derived form is also preserved.

Labiovelar

The labiovelar extensions to the syllabary require a little more consideration for the selection of suitable names. In Ge'ez language ድቃል has the meaning of "derived from" (or "something originating from something else"). In Amharic, ዲቃላ gets applied to the extra labiovelar letters as a group but also means "bastard". ተውሳክ might be a good choice for the name as it has the meaning for "additional" in Ge'ez but unfortunately in Tigrigna and Amharic the term is used for "parasite" which again does not conjur up an appropriate relationship. Both ዲቃላ and ተውሳክ do invoke confusion when used in the intended context and imply an illegitimacy to the characters that is best avoided. ዘመደ (the adjective form of ዘመድ) is then applied from Ge'ez for the generic form of "related". Fortunately the same meaning has carried over into Amharic and Tigrigna. Versus alternatives that also communicate a relationship (brother, sister, aunt, uncle) "zemede" nicely avoids debate over the appropriate gender associations.

The remaining labiovelar syllables appear only in the zemede-rabi form and would be named accordingly. An alternative naming scheme would have been one to apply extensions to the "first", "second", "third" name conventions for "eighth" thru "twelfth". The names of the forms after the seventh are less familiar to the average person and could even look contrived after the tenth form. Doing so would also meet with some resistance as the seven basic syllables are tied to the seven days of the week and one is consider as immutable as the other. Certainly the terms would not be as easy to remember and debate is likely over whether the remaining forms are rightfully an eleventh form or merely an eighth. In contrast, the "zemede" convention never has to confront these issues.

The ordering indicated in our last table is in the traditional system. The name convention unfortunately may invoke some confusion when compared against the Unicode sequence for these same elements. The Unicode definition orders the letters in a phonetic based sequence where the zemede-kaib form is shown in the zemede-sadis position. Linguistically these two forms are virtually indistinguishable and the same type of ordering is also found in Ethiopian references. In keeping with the traditional conventions, which underlie this work, the entity names here do offer a partial rectification to the non-traditional sequence used in Unicode.

Extended Zemede

A few relics of syllabary's evolution remain for us to contend with. The Alef series has what appears to be a non-labiovelar eighth form (ኧ) used primarily in Sebatbeit and Amharic. Rather than name it with an eighth form we adorn the character with the label "alef-zemede-geez" for consistency.

At the end of the Unicode Ethiopic syllabary we find the ligatures ፙ, ፘ and ፚ which find no modern use (save for publishing Unicode tables). These letters could be treated as a thirteenth form (ala Dawkins⁵) but this would embrace the extended form confusion that we've made the effort already to avoid. As a resolution "zemede-ya" is applied to indicate the relationship to ያ from which the ligature is formed.

Numerals

Ge'ez numeral names are the natural choice for naming the entities. The names of numbers will take a variety of forms depending on the context of the phrase they are invoked in. The entity names given below are those used when referring to the numerals themselves and are considered common knowledge.

Punctuation

Ethiopic punctuation is unique in that unlike previous character elements most do have commonly used names in the present day. To remain language neutral however we seek out the Ge'ez names for the punctuation at the cost of the loss of familiarity.

Ge'ez names were not available for the punctuation marks ፥, ፦, ፧, ፨ and so had to be derived. For ፧ and ፨ names are constructed directly from the number of "dots" (ነጥብ or ነቍጥ in Ge'ez) in the symbol. ፦ is a modern symbol used primarily in a dialogue or in preface to a list. Accordingly the name አስተአምሮ is chosen from Ge'ez meaning "to explain". አቅርቦት was the next runner up here as it similarly means "to introduce" or "to present". አስተአምሮ was preferred however as it implies more, a greater amount of, information is being communicated. Finally we have ፦ which originated (and is still largely recognized as) another form of ፣. Fortunately two Ge'ez terms are available for both ነጠለ ሠረዝ and ንዑስ ሠረዝ. We apply ነጠለ ሠረዝ to ፣ as the name will already be familiar to Amharic speakers and ንዑስ ሠረዝ then remains for ፦.