Cartographical knowledge poll

[lethargic_man]

Where's this?



(You're not allowed to answer if you saw the threads on the other people's blogs which led to this.)

Comments

[troo.livejournal.com]

Probably because the people living there now aredifferent from those of 3000 years ago?

[lethargic-man.livejournal.com]

In order to answer this, I think I would need more information on the use of names in Hebrew: what the frequency is of names outliving the original countries or ethnic groups they referred to; how this related to whether Jews lived there or not at the time, whether the place having a clear geographical identity (e.g. an island) had any bearing on it, and so forth.

I can think of names which have outlived their original inhabitants, but only where the same Biblical name continues to be used by with the new inhabitants, e.g. מצרים, which the original inhabitants called Khem, but the current ones, being Semites like the ancient Israelites, call Miṣr. (ObLinguisticGeeking: I wonder whether the dual form of the Hebrew name reflects memory of the union of Upper Egypt and Lower Egypt into a single kingdom...)

I'm not sure whether the name תימן is an equivalent of Yemen. (Cite me other names with T -> Y changing between Hebrew and Arabic!)

But you're right that we don't refer to places like Ashur and Aram any more, so you might be right.