Contents

Ephraim Nissan
Kidor: a Talmudic onomastic pun, and hypotheses concerning the etymology. Part two
SEC 20 (2015), 181–206

Abstract
The actual etymology of a peculiar man’s name, found in a late antique nomen omen tale, has been elusive. Quite possibly, the name was invented for the character in the tale, in order to enable a homiletic explanation illustrating nomen omen. It is also possible however that in the broader region, some onomastic item existed which, being somewhat similar, may make it more credible for a tale to claim that a man bearing that name had existed. The dishonest innkeeper Kidor from a Talmudic story had a name that, sounding like negative wording from Scripture, alarmed one sage (because of homiletic etymology), but his two companions consigned their belongings to that innkeeper, who would not return them. Kidor (or rather ‹kydwr›) is not easy to etymologise. We progress considerably beyond its scholarly treatment thus far. We marshal onomastic data, make and compare hypotheses. Pre-Islamic Arabic anthroponymy may be involved; a Hebrew etymology is not ruled out. We point out Greek wordplay unlikely not to be detected in the Roman East. In the present Part Two, we continue the etymological discussion of the anthroponomastic item, consider Arabic data from late antiquity, and then focus on a particular Arabic onomastic item that in recent centuries has been culturally loaded across religious denominations, and in the history of religious ideas is likely to continue pre-Islamic lore from the Near East, including some lore that was blended with Hellenistic culture. Whereas we do not identify that name with the onomastic item under consideration with certainty, for the sake of completeness we had to sift through the data, and we have come up with one possibility of identification which may, just may have warranted the claim in the tale that a character was bearing the particular name. It may have made it more “credible”, even though in the economy of the tale, the homiletic explanation of the name was sufficient for it being used in the first place.

BibTeX

@article{Nissan15b,
	author	= {Nissan, Ephraim},
	title	= {\textit{Kidor}: a Talmudic onomastic pun, and hypotheses concerning the etymology. Part two},
	journal	= {Studia Etymologica Cracoviensia},
	volume	= {20},
	year	= {2015},
	pages	= {181–206}
}