Talk:Name of Syria

Unbalanced
This article seems to me, after reading through it, to be a little bit of unbalanced. For example, Syrians was also applied for the Arameans. The TriZ (talk) 11:49, 16 October 2008 (UTC)

The article does mention that the term Syrian was also applied to the Arameans. However, this was much later on, and only by Indo-European speakers. The name was originally applied to Assyria and the Assyrians, quite specifically. The article is also about the Name of Syria, how and where it originated. — Preceding unsigned comment added by EddieDrood (talk • contribs) 08:51, 3 March 2015 (UTC)

Edit war
ArameanSyriac, stop introducing your personal opinion with stuff like "The name is often incorrectly connected to Ασσυρία". The article makes perfectly clear that the two names likely have the same etymology. Keep going and you're just headed for another block. We are still waiting for you to make your first constructive contribution. --dab (𒁳) 12:09, 9 January 2009 (UTC)


 * The whole music, sports, history, language, culture, traditions etc sections in the article Syriac people was written by me. Also, there was no history about the western Assyrian/Syriac people, and i wrote a whole section about that. AramaeanSyriac (talk) 14:58, 9 January 2009 (UTC)

It is VERY CLEAR where the name Syria originated, and when. It is equally clear that it did indeed derive from Assurayu/Assur and for many many centuries ONLY apply to Assyria. — Preceding unsigned comment added by EddieDrood (talk • contribs) 08:53, 3 March 2015 (UTC)

Professor Wallace B. Fleming asserts that the name Syria derives from Tyre, the name of the most important Phoenician city. Please refer to his book < Wallace B. Fleming >. Reverend Fleming was president of the West Virginia Wesleyan College between 1915 and 1922, then president of the Baker University from 1922 to 1936, and finally taught Hebrew and Greek at the Drew Theological Seminary (New Jersey).

Asserting the above, please find below an extract from his book < Wallace B. Fleming > from the Preface, and pages 3 and 4.

"Of the Phoenician cities, Tyre was the most important; is was so important that the Greeks gave its name to the whole region, calling it Συρια, from אור Tsur, Tyre, and the Greek name is perpetuated to this day in our word, Syria. Herodotus speaks of Syria as an abbreviation of Assyria, but in this, he is misled by the similarity of the words".

Further on, Professor Fleming says, "It took its name Tyre (Greek Τυροσ, Phoenician אר, Arabic صور Assyrian and Babylonian Sur-ru, Hebrew אור or אר, Egyptian Dara or Tar, or Taru in the Tell El Amarna letters, early Latin Sarra) from the island, the Semitic Sur, meaning Rock."

The statement of Pr Fleming makes much sense, for many reasons.

First, Tyre was indeed one of the richest cities in the Near East, and for many centuries, probably one millennium. It had numerous colonies all around the Mediterranean, who payed royalties to their mother city. There are also testimonies of the wealth of Tyre in the Bible : the totality of Chapter 27 of Ezekiel (who lived in the VI° century B.C.) is dedicated to describe Tyre's wealth, though he predicts its fall, which effectively happened two centuries later. See also Zachariah 9:3. This means that cities and towns from all around the region of Tyre traded with it, or simply people came to find in it a better way of life. And again, this happened for centuries. All these activities have built for the city a very strong reputation in the Near Eastern region.

Second, naming a region on the basis of its most important city makes sense. Examples are : Assyria which is derived from its main city Ashur, Tunisia is derived from Tunis, Algeria is derived from Algiers, and so on.

Third, western civilizations created the name Syria, not eastern ones. This means that western historians based their naming philosophy on what they understood from the Near East at the time they created such names. So the names given by western civilizations cannot be taken for granted, since their understanding may be incorrect. And this is exactly what Pr Fleming is saying, by asserting that Herodotus was misled.

Naming a region by adding a letter to the name of another region is very unusual.

This is why I am disagreeing with the statement saying that the name Syria is derived from Assyria. For me, the name Syria derives from Sur, the Semitic name of Tyre. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Joseph Maalouf (talk • contribs) 17:20, 17 October 2021 (UTC)

Strabo and Justinus on Etymology
The first century B.C. Strabo attests to the fact that Syria meant Assyria. He writes:" When those who have written histories about the Syrian empire say that the Medes were overthrown by the Persians and the Syrians by the Medes, they mean by the Syrian no other people than those who built the royal palaces in Babylon and Ninus; and of these Syrians, Ninus was the man who founded Ninus [Nineveh], in Aturia..[Assyria]. (H.L. Jones Translation of "Geography of Strabo", New York 1916, Vol. VIII p.195)

The third century Roman historian Justinus also attests to this fact. He wrote: "The Assyrians, who were afterwards called Syrians, held their empire for thirteen hundred years." (Marcus Junianus Justinus Epitome of the Philippic, "History of Pompeius Trogus", translated by Rev. John Selby Watson. (London: Henry G. Bohn, 1853)Ninevite (talk) 20:02, 26 January 2009 (UTC)


 * So? Your looking for quotations, then here you go . The TriZ (talk) 19:50, 27 January 2009 (UTC)

I have added these referenced quotes to the article. — Preceding unsigned comment added by EddieDrood (talk • contribs) 08:54, 3 March 2015 (UTC)

The neutrality of this article is questionable
Parts of this article seems when I look at it to be written with a personal point of view.

For example,

"Herodotus used it loosely to refer to Cappadocia (Pipes 1992).[1] In Greek usage, Syria and Assyria were used almost interchangeably, but in the Roman Empire, Syria and Assyria came to be used as distinct geographical terms."

Researches shows that Herodotus consistently distinguished the names Syria and Assyria, how can it then be said that in Greek usage, Syria and Assyria were used almost interchangeably? (See pp. 21.)

Furthermore,

"Etymologically, the name is often connected to Ασσυρία, Assuria, from the Akkadian Aššur. Theodor Nöldeke in 1881 was the first to give philological support to the assumption that Syria and Assyria have the same etymology,[2] a suggestion going back to John Selden (1617)."

Often? That's a very subjectively word to use in this context. About the support from Nöldeke, the source used tells nothing about Nöldekes supposedly support.

The article continues by saying,

"Current academic opinion favours the connection."

Indeed a very much POV statement. The entire article seems to be written and arranged in a way to favour the writers own personal view of this matter.

"Assyriologist Simo Parpola connects the etymological question to the ethnic identity of the present-day Aramaic-speaking peoples:

Since omission of initial vowels is not a feature of Aramaic phonology, the lack of the initial A- in Sūrāyā/Sūr(y)ōyō cannot be due to internal Aramaic development but must go back directly to Neo-Assyrian. The phonology of Sūrāyā (Sūrōyō) thus implies that this term, which is crucial to the identity of the present-day Aramaic-speaking peoples, entered the Aramaic language in the seventh century BC, when the Arameans already were a fully integrated part of the Assyrian nation. In contrast to the word Āθūr, which was borrowed into Aramaic when Assyria still was an alien society, it cannot be regarded as a loanword but as an indigenous selfdesignation, which the Aramaic-speaking Assyrians shared with their Akkadian-speaking fellow citizens.[6]

The question has a certain importance in the Assyrian naming dispute.[7]"

The hypothesis of the lost a in the begining of the word Sūrōyō has been rejected by several academics, in example by Wolfhart Heinrichs who calls the hypothesis "simply naive". (Festschrift Philologica Constantino Tsereteli Dicta, ed. Silvio Zaorani (Turin, 1993) under the chapter entitled "The Modern Assyrians - Name and Nation", pp. 106-107) He alos states that "even if "Syrian" were derived from "Assyrian", it does not mean that the people and culture of geographical Syria are identical to those of geographical Assyria.". Based on this, the question can not be of such importance, if to any importance at all, in the naming dispute as some of the previous writers of this article has tried to present. The TriZ (talk) 20:29, 31 January 2009 (UTC)

The arabic letter used, ش transliterated as syin (instead of shod ص). Asy syams meaning the sun. Not sure if that is the intended meaning for syria (suriah). YogiHalim (talk) 14:31, 26 July 2019 (UTC)

What do Syrians call Syria?
This is not mentioned in the article, but it seems fundamental to the topic. --Chriswaterguy talk 06:04, 13 August 2011 (UTC)

Modern Syrians call it by the traditional arab pronunciation: Suriyya and the people are called suriyeen. However before the rise of arab nationalism syriacs would say: Surya and call themselves Suryani. Also, Syrian Arabs(non-syriacs)would call themselves something entirely different: al-shami.


 * "Syria" is an English name (from French/Latin) that far predates the formation of the Syrian Repblic (1930); by saying "Syrians" and "Syria", you are using a common shorthand for "Syrian Arab Republic"; this would have been meaningless prior to 1930. But of course the article can also discuss the Arabic term and its history (spoiler: it's from the Greek). --dab (𒁳) 06:50, 25 October 2016 (UTC)