“Musselman” (pronounced “Mous Ahl Maaan”)is the Persianized version of Muslim. It is, to this day, the proper word for Muslim in Urdu and other S Asian languages. It is however for some reason seen as objectionable in Europe (less UK) and N America.
Lots of Arabic Islamic terms were Persianised when they were introduced from Arabic. When Islam spread into the sub-continent it was these terms which were used, and often it is these terms which entered British English. Some are fairly similar, other are pretty different.
For instance:
Arabic: S**hi’ite, Persian: Shia
Arabic: Ramadan, Persian: Ramazan
Arabic: *Saalat *(prayer), Persian: Namaz
Arabic: Sawm (fasting), Persian: Roza
Until a few decades ago the Persian word for God, Khuda, was used more or less interchangeably with Allah outside of prayer.
Come to think of it, it was a few decades ago when I was in India learning to speak Urdu, and *Khuda was used in everyday language. If that’s now been discarded, it must be the recent influence of fundamentalism emanating from Saudi Arabia. As far as I know, in Iran, where they successfully resist Saudi influence, they still say Khoda.
*The vowel o is a modern Iranian innovation, where Urdu preserves the original u. Same word, though. In Urdu they say Musalman, while in Iran the pronunciation has shifted to Mosalman. The spelling remains unchanged.
But Italian, French, Spanish, Catalan, Basque… also use the Latin alphabet and do not use those words. So saying “in the Latin alphabet” is misleading, as it makes the transliterations more universal than they are. Words exist in specific languages, not in specific alphabets.
In this case that isn’t very plausible, because Christ is not a Greek translation of an Aramaic word but is Greek itself - χριστός. There’s no ambiguity when transliterating an iota into Latin.
“Chrestus” means good. It was a common name, especially for slaves, in the Roman days. Suetonius used it, but it is unlikely to have been about Christ, as is was about an agitator who caused some riots during the reign of Claudius. I have read of Jesus having the title of “Chrestus” meaning “The Good”, though.
Thank you. That makes the whole thing make a lot more sense.
I admit to far more ignorance of the region’s history and culture and language than I should accept. I’m pretty good on the events & dynamics of the last 50 years, but woefully underequipped to understand how they got to there. Time to get reading.
As long as the topic has become so intensive/extensive, worth adding is the nonce use of the word “musselman,” which thankfully had a unique time and place for its semantic purpose, but which lives on as long as history lives on:
In Auschwitz, certainly, if not in other death camps, a Musselman (in Yiddish and German the same cognate as above) somehow came to mean “one who has lost all but the barest near-autonomous ability of life preservation, who shuffles vacantly and eyeless, and is already (as if) dead.” This way to the gas chambers, ladies and gentlemen, is already superfluous for them.
General cites on request; no way am I going to make a research project on it.
Romance languages’ usual words are that one, tweaked by local pronunciation and spelling: musulmán (ES), musulmà (CAT), musulman (FR), musulmano (IT)… Mahometano (of course with its variations by language) is less frequent; it gets used sparingly in order to avoid too much repetition. No words more similar to “Muslim” than to the Persian word.
For what it’s worth, I fully agree that the (a) the original text is in Greek and (b) no competent student of Greek would transliterate χριστός into English as “Chrest.”
OP, that’s what you get for hanging out on Quora. Those people can’t even see that “monologue” is a false etymology. Crikey! </s>
The first (or one of the first) Christian writers to engage seriously with Islam (from a critical standpoint) was John of Damascus, and he referred to Muslims as “Ishmaelites” or “Hagarenes”, to indicate their spiritual descent from Abraham’s son through Hagar.
Regarding “Muslim” vs. “Moslem”, the first seems like a reasonable phonetic approximation of the way it’s pronounced, the second is a terrible approximation and I don’t know why anyone ever thought to spell it that way.
Is there any doubt that Chrestus is a real name and not just a typo? Eg I remember some… interesting epigrams by Marcus Valerius concerning Chrestina, as well as Chrestus.
Is there any doubt that Chrestus is a real name and not always a typo? Eg I remember some… interesting epigrams by Marcus Valerius concerning Chrestina, as well as Chrestus.
“Turtledove novel?”