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'Star' as a word
— · — · —
names 44languages 31
In the classical tradition this is तारा Tārā, attested in 1 texts.
The names
vernacular 14 · tribal 16 · borrowed 14
| Name | Language | Meaning | Register |
|---|---|---|---|
| themü | Angami Naga the Angami country, Naga Hills (now Nagaland) | Often regarded as men translated to the heavens after death. No distinction is drawn between stars and planets except size. | tribal |
| petinu (C); peli (M) | Ao Naga the Ao country, Naga Hills (now Nagaland) | — | tribal |
| Kolitpicho | Chaura (Chowra) Chowra (Chaura) island, Nicobars | — | tribal |
| Koram, Udumbam | Cholanaikkan the reserved forests of Nilambur, Malappuram district, Kerala | The two words the Cholanaikkans gave for 'star'. The recorders add that they identify no individual stars and know no star patterns at all: shown the night sky in the Kozhikode planetarium, the party smiled and walked out. | tribal |
| ތަރި thari | Divehi (Mahl) the Maldives, and Minicoy (Maliku) in Lakshadweep, which speaks the same language and keeps the same calendar | — | borrowed |
| Noringro-Nojingjo | Garo the Garo Hills, Assam (now Meghalaya) | Playfair's informants held the stars to be spirits set in the heavens as rulers of the seasons and the years — a governing function, not a decorative one, and the frame on which the whole fourteen-name catalogue that follows is hung. | tribal |
| तारा / تارا tārā | Hindi Hindustani generally | 'star'; also 'the pupil of the eye' The workhorse word, and the base of most compound names in this file (guććhā tārā, quṭbī tārā, ujāle-kā tārā, dhurū tārā, dum kā tārā, tapt tārā). Platts's sub-entries are a small ethnography in themselves: tārā ṭūṭnā 'a star to shoot', tāre ginnā 'to count the stars, to get no sleep', tāroṅ-kī chān 'daybreak', din-ko tāre dikhānā 'to show one stars by daylight, to beat severely'. | borrowed |
| ipil (dual ipilkiŋ, plural ipilko) | Ho Kolhan, Singhbhum, Jharkhand | star Burrows uses the word as his paradigm for the animate noun class, alongside 'man'. | tribal |
| ಅಱಿಲ್ aṟil | Kannada Karnataka (Mysore, Canara, Deccan) | A second, purely Dravidian, classical Kannada star-word; obsolete in the modern language and known mainly from the old lexicons Kittel cites. | vernacular |
| ಚಿಕ್ಕಿ cikki | Kannada Karnataka (Mysore, Canara, Deccan) | spot, speck, dot The colloquial modern Kannada word (also ಚುಕ್ಕಿ cukki, ಚುಕ್ಕೆ cukke, ಚಿಕ್ಕೆ cikke), cognate with Telugu cukka. | vernacular |
| ಮೀನ್ mīn | Kannada Karnataka (Mysore, Canara, Deccan) | fish The classical Kannada word for a star is the word for a fish. Kittel's own guess at the motivation is printed in the entry. | vernacular |
| ತಾರಗೆ tārage | Kannada Karnataka (Mysore, Canara, Deccan) | Tadbhava of tārakā, thoroughly naturalised; forms the compound tārage-vaṭṭe 'the starry path, the sky'. | borrowed |
| ಉಡು uḍu | Kannada Karnataka (Mysore, Canara, Deccan) | — | borrowed |
| ستاره sitāra | Kashmiri Kashmir valley | — | vernacular |
| तारुख् tārukh | Kashmiri Kashmir valley | — | borrowed |
| तारा tārā | Kashmiri Kashmir valley | — | borrowed |
| khlur (abbreviated 'lur) | Khasi Khasi and Jaintia hills, Meghalaya | star | tribal |
| neketru | Konkani South Kanara / Mangalore | — | borrowed |
| suka (pl. sukanga) | Kui the Kondh hills of Odisha | — | tribal |
| tāro, tarei | Kumaoni Kumaon, United Provinces (now Uttarakhand) | — | borrowed |
| bīnkō | Kurukh Chota Nagpur plateau (Oraon country), Jharkhand | star | tribal |
| മീന് mīn | Malayalam Kerala (Malabar, Cochin, Travancore) | 'fish'; also 'that which glitters' (Gundert derives it from മിന് 'to glitter') The inherited Dravidian word for a star. It is the productive element in the vernacular sky vocabulary: കൊളളിമീന് meteor, വാല്മീന് comet, വെണ്മീന്/വെഴ്മീന്/പെരുമീന് Venus. | vernacular |
| ꯊꯋꯥꯟꯃꯤꯆꯥꯛ thawānmicāk | Meitei (Manipuri) Manipur | — | tribal |
| arsi | Mizo (Lushai) the Lushai Hills, Assam (now Mizoram) | — | tribal |
| arsi êk | Mizo (Lushai) the Lushai Hills, Assam (now Mizoram) | 'star-dung' Lorrain's entry for êk (p. 122) glosses it 'excrement, dung, manure' and cross-refers to arsi êk among its compounds, so the literal sense is his and not the compiler's. | tribal |
| तारो tāro | Nepali Nepal, and the Nepali-speaking Darjeeling and Sikkim hills | Turner's senses are 'star; target, mark; cynosure', and he hangs five compounds on the headword: dhrub-tāro the polestar, puchre tāro a comet, phuṭne tāro a meteor, tārā-maṇḍal a constellation, and sāt tārā the Great Bear. Four of the five are entered separately below. | borrowed |
| नगु nagu | Newar (Nepal Bhasa) the Kathmandu valley | Jørgensen glosses it 'a star, nakṣatra' and cites the Chittadharma Vaṃśāvalī. | vernacular |
| ତରା / ତାରା tarā / tārā | Odia Odisha | 'star' Odia distinguishes the worn-down ତରା tarā, which is what all the folk compounds in this file are built on (khachuā tarā, phukiā tarā, keuñṭi tārā, lañjā tārā), from the tatsama ତାରକା tārakā, whose second sense is 'comet' — ଲଞ୍ଜା ତାରା. | vernacular |
| Sukar | Pardhi fourteen Pardhi villages of the Amravati and Yeotmal districts, Vidarbha, Maharashtra, surveyed 2016-2018 | Tabled by the paper as its last astronomical term, against the bare description 'a star'. | tribal |
| तारौ tārau | Rajasthani Rajasthan generally (Lalas does not dialect-mark this headword) | Lalas gives twelve synonyms at this headword — uḍagaṇa, graha, jota, jotakī, tārā, teja, dīpanabha, dhisana, nakhata, bhā, rikhabha, rūpamaṇi — of which dīpanabha ('lamp of the sky') and rūpamaṇi ('the silver jewel') are not Sanskrit star-words. Then six idioms, and the last four are a single technical usage: tārā mem, tārau asta hoṇau, tārau ūgaṇau and tārau lāgaṇau all concern the heliacal SETTING AND RISING OF JUPITER AND VENUS, the period between them being inauspicious for weddings and other auspicious work. In Rajasthani the bare word 'star' has come to mean that rule. The two ordinary idioms are tārā giṇaṇā, 'to count the stars', i.e. to suffer, and tārā toṛaṇā, 'to pluck stars', i.e. to attempt the impossible. | borrowed |
| shenyü (A); awachi (B); awachi (C) | Rengma Naga the Rengma country, Naga Hills (now Nagaland), and the Mikir Hills | Stars are sometimes thought to be the souls of people who for some unknown reason have gone to the sky instead of to the Land of the Dead. | tribal |
| aye; ayesü (small stars); ayepu (big stars and planets) | Sema (Sumi) Naga the Sema country, Naga Hills (now Nagaland) | The stars are believed to be, in some cases at least, men translated to the heavens after death. No distinction other than size is drawn between the smaller stars and the planets. | tribal |
| ستارو sitāro | Sindhi Sind (Bombay Presidency); Mewaram's dictionary is not dialect-marked | — | vernacular |
| تارو tāro | Sindhi Sind (Bombay Presidency); Mewaram's dictionary is not dialect-marked | — | borrowed |
| තරුව taruva | Sinhala Sri Lanka | also 'tree' and 'pupil of the eye' The productive native element in the Sinhala sky vocabulary: පහන් තරුව morning star, ඉරබටු තරුව evening star, කළමුනිදුතරුව Canopus, වල්ගාතරුව comet, තරුගල 'star-stone' meteorite. | vernacular |
| tui-tuj-ən, tuj-tuj-ən, tu-tuj-ən | Sora the Sora country of the Ganjam and Koraput hills, Odisha and northern Andhra | One word, Ramamurti says, for a star, a planet and a falling star alike. In the compounds the first element contracts to tuj-, which is the element that ends every Sora star-name. | tribal |
| மீன் mīṉ | Tamil Tamil Nadu | 'the shining one', from miṉṉu- 'to flash, glitter' The ordinary Tamil word for star from the Caṅkam period to the present, and the base of nearly every indigenous Tamil star-name. Winslow adds the colloquial மீன் முளைத்திருக்கிறது 'stars appear', marked 'Vulgar usage', and the proverb மதியை மீன் சூழ்ந்ததுபோல 'as the stars surround the moon'. | vernacular |
| தாரகை tārakai | Tamil Tamil Nadu | Sanskrit tārakā in Tamil form; the collective தாராகணம் tārā-kaṇam and தாரகாகணம் tārakā-kaṇam are the Tamil terms for a constellation or star-cluster. | borrowed |
| உடு uṭu | Tamil Tamil Nadu | Sanskrit uḍu in Tamil phonology, a learned word of the nikaṇṭus rather than of speech. Winslow glosses it simply 'A star, விண்மீன்'. | borrowed |
| விண்மீன் viṇ-mīṉ | Tamil Tamil Nadu | sky-star The standard modern Tamil word for a star, distinguishing it unambiguously from mīṉ 'fish'. The Lexicon records the colloquial contraction விம்மீன் vimmīṉ, marked 'Loc.' | vernacular |
| చుక్క cukka | Telugu Telugu country (Madras Presidency: Coastal Andhra, Rayalaseema, Telangana) | dot, spot, drop The ordinary Telugu word for a star, and the second element of most of the language's own star-names (X-cukka). Brown lists the astronomical sense third, after 'mark' and 'drop'. | vernacular |
| మెరుగురిక్క merugu-rikka | Telugu Telugu country (Madras Presidency: Coastal Andhra, Rayalaseema, Telangana) | the shining star | vernacular |
| తార tāra | Telugu Telugu country (Madras Presidency: Coastal Andhra, Rayalaseema, Telangana) | The learned word beside native cukka; the derivative tārā-pathamu 'starry path' is the standard Telugu word for the firmament. | borrowed |
| ستاره sitāra | Urdu Urdu, from Persian | 'star'; by extension 'fortune, destiny' The Persian counterpart of tārā, cognate with it through Indo-Iranian - Platts gives the etymology explicitly. It carries the fortune-telling vocabulary: sitāra-shinās 'astrologer', sitāra chamaknā 'for one's star to shine'. Alongside it Urdu has Arabic najm and kaukab and Persian aḵẖtar, all glossed simply 'a star; constellation'. | vernacular |
Sources
- J.H. Hutton, The Angami Nagas (London: Macmillan, 1921), Appendix VIII, p. 412 link
- J.P. Mills, The Ao Nagas (London: Macmillan, 1926), p. 302 link
- M.N. Vahia, Ganesh Halkare, S.A. Awaradi and Kishore Menon, 'In situ studies of astronomy of the Nicobarese tribe of Nicobar Islands', Heritage: Journal of Multidisciplinary Studies in Archaeology, 6, 1014-1039 (2018), Table 3, pp. 1026-1027 link
- M. N. Vahia, V. S. Ramachandran, Jayant Gangopadhyay and Justin Joseph, 'Astronomy of Cholanaikkan tribe of Kerala', arXiv:1702.04149 (2017), §9 'Their astronomy', p. 7 link
- Hassan Ahmed Maniku, A Concise Etymological Vocabulary of Dhivehi Language, Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society of Sri Lanka, Special Volume XLIV (Colombo, 2000), s.v. thari, p. 233 link
- Major A. Playfair, The Garos (London: David Nutt, 1909), p. 85 link
- John T. Platts, A Dictionary of Urdu, Classical Hindi and English (London, 1884), s.v. tārā, p. 304 link
- Burrows, Ho Grammar, with Vocabulary (1915), on the animate and inanimate noun classes link
- Kittel, F., A Kannaḍa-English Dictionary (orig. Mangalore: Basel Mission, 1894); cited from the revised and enlarged edition, [Madras] University of Madras, 1968-71, as keyed for DSAL, s.v. ಅಱಿಲ್ aṟil 1, p. 105 link
- Kittel, F., A Kannaḍa-English Dictionary (orig. Mangalore: Basel Mission, 1894); cited from the revised and enlarged edition, [Madras] University of Madras, 1968-71, as keyed for DSAL, s.v. ಚಿಕ್ಕಿ cikki 2, p. 643 link
- Kittel, F., A Kannaḍa-English Dictionary (orig. Mangalore: Basel Mission, 1894); cited from the revised and enlarged edition, [Madras] University of Madras, 1968-71, as keyed for DSAL, s.v. ಮೀನ್ mīn 2, p. 1328 link
- Kittel, F., A Kannaḍa-English Dictionary (orig. Mangalore: Basel Mission, 1894); cited from the revised and enlarged edition, [Madras] University of Madras, 1968-71, as keyed for DSAL, s.v. ತಾರಗೆ tārage, p. 752 link
- Kittel, F., A Kannaḍa-English Dictionary (orig. Mangalore: Basel Mission, 1894); cited from the revised and enlarged edition, [Madras] University of Madras, 1968-71, as keyed for DSAL, s.v. ಉಡು uḍu 6, p. 225 link
- Sir George Abraham Grierson, A Dictionary of the Kashmiri Language, compiled partly from materials left by the late Pandit Isvara Kaula (Calcutta: Asiatic Society of Bengal, 1916-1932), s.v. sitāra, p. 948 link
- Sir George Abraham Grierson, A Dictionary of the Kashmiri Language, compiled partly from materials left by the late Pandit Isvara Kaula (Calcutta: Asiatic Society of Bengal, 1916-1932), s.v. tārukh, p. 1024 link
- Sir George Abraham Grierson, A Dictionary of the Kashmiri Language, compiled partly from materials left by the late Pandit Isvara Kaula (Calcutta: Asiatic Society of Bengal, 1916-1932), s.v. tārā, p. 1018 link
- Nissor Singh, Khasi-English Dictionary (1906), s.v. Khlur, p. 33; s.v. 'lur, p. 120 link
- A. F. X. Maffei, An English-Konkani Dictionary (Mangalore: Basel Mission Press, 1883), s.v. Star, p. 455 link
- W.W. Winfield, A Vocabulary of the Kui Language, Bibliotheca Indica (Calcutta: Asiatic Society of Bengal, 1929), s.v. suka, p. 116 link
- George Abraham Grierson, Linguistic Survey of India, Vol. IX Part IV: Specimens of the Pahārī Languages and Gujurī (Calcutta: Superintendent of Government Printing, 1916), Kumauni-English Vocabulary, comparative word-list, item 64 link
- Grignard, An Oraon-English Dictionary (1924), s.v. bīnkō, p. 85 link
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- J. Herbert Lorrain, Dictionary of the Lushai Language, Bibliotheca Indica Work No. 261 (Calcutta: The Asiatic Society, 1940), s.v. arsi, p. 14 link
- J. Herbert Lorrain, Dictionary of the Lushai Language, Bibliotheca Indica Work No. 261 (Calcutta: The Asiatic Society, 1940), s.v. arsi êk, p. 14 link
- R. L. Turner, A Comparative and Etymological Dictionary of the Nepali Language (London: Kegan Paul, Trench, Trubner, 1931), s.v. तारो, p. 280 link
- Hans Jørgensen, A Dictionary of the Classical Newārī (Copenhagen: Levin & Munksgaard, 1936), s.v. नगु, p. 99 link
- G. C. Praharaj, Purnnachandra Ordia Bhashakosha: a lexicon of the Oriya language, Cuttack: Utkal Sahitya Press, 1931-1940 (DSAL digital ed.), s.v. ତାରକା Tārakā, p. 3445 link
- Ganesh Halkare, Purushottam Dahedar, Wayne Orchiston and M.N. Vahia, 'Astronomy of the Pardhi tribe of central India', Journal of Astronomical History and Heritage, 22(1), 179-194 (2019), Table 5, pp. 184-185 link
- Sītārāṃma Lāḷasa, Rājasthānī Sabada Kośa, 2nd ed. (Jodhpur: Rājasthānī Śodha Saṃsthāna, Caupāsanī, 2013), s.v. तारौ, p. 1506 link
- J.P. Mills, The Rengma Nagas (London: Macmillan, 1937), p. 244 link
- J.H. Hutton, The Sema Nagas (London: Macmillan, 1921), p. 250–252 link
- Parmanand Mewaram, A Sindhi-English Dictionary (Hyderabad, Sind: The Sind Juvenile Co-operative Society, 1910), s.v. ستارو, p. 311 link
- Parmanand Mewaram, A Sindhi-English Dictionary (Hyderabad, Sind: The Sind Juvenile Co-operative Society, 1910), s.v. تارو, p. 86 link
- Carter, A Sinhalese-English Dictionary (Colombo, 1924), s.v. තරුව taruva, p. 253 link
- G.V. Ramamurti, Sora-English Dictionary (Delhi: Manager of Publications, 1938), s.v. tui-'tuj-ən, p. 300 link
- Tamil Lexicon (University of Madras, 1924-36), s.v. மீன்¹, vol. VI p. 3214; quoting Tirukkuṟaḷ 1116 link
- Tamil Lexicon (University of Madras, 1924-36), s.v. தாரகை¹, vol. III p. 1843; quoting Tirukkōvaiyār 116 link
- Tamil Lexicon (University of Madras, 1924-36), s.v. உடு³, vol. I p. 399, citing the Piṅkala Nikaṇṭu link
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- Brown, C. P., A Telugu-English Dictionary, new ed., thoroughly revised and brought up to date (Madras: Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge, 1903), s.v. చుక్క ṭsukka, p. 449 link
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- John T. Platts, A Dictionary of Urdu, Classical Hindi and English (London, 1884), s.v. sitāra, p. 637 link