Endurance.Net Ridecamp Archives

In Egypt, Arabic names all mean something, however odd it may be, like 
one of my grooms who was named Khamis or "Thursday".  Sometimes the 
only response is a smile and "Whatever."  If a horse was imported from 
Egypt and - most importantly - his/her name was transliterated 
properly, a meaning should be findable. You picked a good example, Kat, 
with Talal, which is an Arab name (as in Saudi) of relatively obscure 
meaning. But I'm invited to a wedding tonight and a bunch of us will 
sit around with a beer and try to figure out what it means. This is 
when I really miss my old friend Magdy, who had a dictionary in his 
head. Arabic is an incredibly complex language and very few people have 
a really good comprehension of the possibilities of a word.

But all too many Arab horses are given names that bear as close a 
resemblance to actual Arabic as Aladdin has to downtown Cairo, even if 
they sound good. I haven't run across the word fay or fa as the word 
for stallion, but it is close to the word fares or faras which is the 
word in colloquial Arabic for stallion. Farsa is the word for mare and 
mohr/mohra for colt/filly.

Arabic lesson for the day finished since I have to make myself 
presentable and that takes a bit of lead time after gardening all day.

Maryanne
Cairo

On Nov 15, 2004, at 3:03 PM, k s swigart wrote:

> Another very good reason for coming up blank with Arabic friends might
> be that the "Arabic" names are not Arabic at all, just something that
> somebody who has an arab horse wanting to name it something that
> "sounds" arabic, and making something up to that effect.  Frequently by
> combining or taking some variation of the arabic sounding names of the
> horse's parents (which may not be arabic at all because those names are
> a combination of the arabic names of the horses' great grandparents).
>
> Don't try TOO hard to find out the arabic meaning of an arabian horse's
> name.  Chances are good that there isn't one because the word isn't
> arabic at all, just something that sounded arabic to somebody who 
> didn't
> speak a word of the language :).
>
> As an example, I have a friend who named her horse Fay Taleeze, after
> his mother who is Miss Taleeze, a daughter of the stallion 
> Taleeze....by
> and imported Egyptian horse *Talal (a name that is probably arabic, but
> who knows if it has any meaning) out an American-Bred mare name Breeze.
>
> If the name Fay Taleeze has any meaning in Arabic it is by pure
> hapinstance, despite the fact that Fay (sometimes spelled Fey or Fa) is
> the, I think, Arabic word for stallion (or maybe just male, I don't
> speak arabic so I don't know, I am just guessing because it shows up in
> lots of names of imported arabic male horses).
>
> kat
> Orange County, Calif.
>
>
>
>
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