O ETIMOLOGIJI NEKIH RIJEČI U PLEMENITOM KUR'ANU
ETIMOLOGY OF SOME WORDS IN THE HOLY QUR'AN

Summary/Abstract: The article addresses the question of whether there are Arabized words, i.e. originally non-Arabic words that spread into Arabic, in the Qur'an. Ever since the first century of Hijra studies and research into this issue has never ceased. The results may be summarized into three views: 1. there are no Arabized words in the Qur'an; 2. Arabized words are found in the Qur'an, and 3. the Qur'an contains words which may be considered paronyms, i.e. words formed from a word in another language or having a similar form to that of a cognate foreign word. The author takes a twofold approach: first, he calls for the whole issue to be reviewed by research teams of scholars who are specialists in the etymology of the source-languages of the Arabized words. Second, he adopts a hypothesis which has two elements: first, admitting that there are Arabized words in the Qur'an, and second, acknowledging also the presence of paronymous words. However, he links Arabized words to non- Semitic languages such as Persian, Hindi, Latin and Greek as they share the same Indo-European linguistic family. He also relates paronyms to other Semitic languages which include Hebrew, Aramaic, Syriac, Nabataean and Ethiopian languages. Coptic and Berber are included too as they form part of a wider Afro-Asiatic linguistic family.

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