Four Shared Words for Camels in Arabic and Akkadian

إبِل

root: ء-ب-ل / collective noun / definition: camels

I learnt a new phrase this weekend, from an Arabic-speaking guy who drove three hours to an underwhelming event and told us: أَكَلْنا خازوق.

Basically, as my husband put it, it means he took an L. In other words, “we’ve been done”. Or, in ever-so-slightly-less colloquial terms (?), “we got screwed over”. (There’s no translating this one formally… we’d lose the emotional context.)

That guy might have “eaten” a خازوق, but we ate kibbeh, biryani, and msemmen that day and were all the better for it.

(For more on Arabic phrases with “أكل”, see Arabic Observations: The Cross-Linguistic-ness of “Eating” a Beating!)

But let’s move from eating to exploring now, and take a look at four nouns—found in both Arabic and Akkadian—that refer to camels.

For the Akkadian terms, I’m using my go-to, A Concise Dictionary of Akkadian, which—like the Hans Wehr for Arabic—organises entries by their root letters.

Ready?

ʾ-b-l

In Akkadian:

In Arabic:

Ibilu, إبل in Arabic, is first on our list. The Akkadian dictionary notes the attested presence of this word in Standard Babylonian (jB) and Neo-Assyrian (NA).

The Arabic term is a collective noun whilst the Akkadian refers to a singular camel.

n-w-q

In Akkadian:

In Arabic:

The Arabic ناقة means “she-camel”.

In the Akkadian dictionary, we find the plural noun anāqāte meaning “she-camels”. This word exists in Neo-Assyrian and apparently entered the language from Arabic. (I wonder if the prefixed a- is related to the pronunciation of the definite form of the Arabic word, الناقة…)

For more about Akkadian plural suffixes and case endings (and how very similar they are to Arabic), see this post of mine from 2023.

b-k-r

In Akkadian:

In Arabic:

The Arabic بَكْر and the Standard Babylonian bakru both refer to a young camel.

It’s interesting that the Akkadian dictionary suggests this word came from Arabic. Are we sure they’re not cognates, derived from a common ancestral root?

j-m-l

In Akkadian:

In Arabic:

We’re ending on the most widespread Arabic term for a camel, جَمَل.

Its Akkadian counterpart, the Neo-Assyrian gammalu, was derived from West Semitic (a class of languages that Arabic is a part of).

The Akkadian entry also refers us over to gammališ, a nisba adjective meaning “camel-like”. Cool.

I’ve written many posts about Arabic-Akkadian similarities since I started studying Akkadian (specifically, the Old Babylonian variety) back in the summer of ’23. Check them out if that’s your vibe.

!مع السلامة