Copyright

Mark Shockley

Published On

2024-10-17

Page Range

pp. 1–26

Language

  • English

Print Length

26 pages

The Dhaid Oasis

Onomastic Investigations in Northern Emirati Villages

  • Mark Shockley (author)
The eastern Arabian peninsula had two primary sources of influence in antiquity: Mesopotamia and South Arabia (Holes 2016, 12; Rohmer et al. 2018, 300). This study presents evidence of linguistic contact with both regions, from primary and secondary data from the northern United Arab Emirates and the adjoining areas of Oman. This chapter is also a first attempt at elucidating the origins of several unique proper names found in the northern U.A.E., using an onomastic database including comprising more than 910,000 proper names in eastern Arabia, including toponyms, family names, and personal names. While most Emirati names are transparently Arabic, a few names have their origins in Akkadian, Aramaic, and Persian. Other names resemble Ancient South Arabian onomastics, corroborating traditional accounts that link certain Emirati tribes with southwestern Arabia. In particular, this paper focuses on the name of the oasis town Dhaid (il-ḏēd), in Sharjah Emirate, and the Bani Kitab (banī kitab) tribe, for whom Dhaid is a historic center.

Contributors

Mark Shockley

(author)
Doctoral Candidate at Leiden University

Mark Shockley is a doctoral candidate in Descriptive Linguistics at Leiden University Centre for Linguistics. His dissertation focuses on describing and comparing Arabic varieties from the Oman-Emirates border northward into the transnational Ruʾūs al-Jibāl region. He is a recent recipient of the Doctoral Research Grant from the Sheikh Saud bin Saqr Al Qasimi Foundation for Policy Research in Ras Al Khaimah, U.A.E., in support of his work documenting Emirati Arabic varieties. He also has forthcoming journal articles in the Journal of Semitic Studies and the Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies.