Urdu

names 20objects 13ISO 639-3 urd

Spoken in Urdu, from Arabic, Urdu, from Arabic/Persian, Urdu, from Arabic; reported as the usual name among educated Muslims in the Panjab, Urdu, from Persian, Urdu, from Persian/Arabic, marked dakh. (Deccani) by Shakespear on Harris's authority; unmarked in Platts and Fallon, marked dakh. (Deccani) by Shakespear; unmarked in Platts and Fallon, so also northern.

vernacular 18 · folk 2

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The sky in Urdu

Name	Object	Meaning	Register
ستاره sitāra	'Star' as a word	'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
نسر nasru'ṭ-ṭāʼir (nasr-i-ṭāʼir)	Altair	'the flying eagle' The source of English 'Altair'. Paired with nasru'l-wāqiʻ (Vega) as a dual, nasrain.	vernacular
سہيل suhail (corr. suhel)	Canopus	Arabic Suhayl, diminutive-form of sahl 'level, easy' The second-brightest star and, like Agastya, a low southern star whose heliacal rising is a season marker. It has entered Hindi verse: McGregor records सुहेल suhel as Avadhi for Canopus.	vernacular
عيوق ʻaiyūq	Capella	Arabic al-ʻayyūq One of the very few individual stars for which Platts gives a precise positional identification, down to the Bayer letter.	vernacular
شہاب shihāb (vulg. shahāb)	Meteors and shooting stars	'a firebrand, a flame' Qur'anic in origin - the shihāb thāqib hurled at eavesdropping jinn. Crooke found the word alive as a name for eerie lights in Rohilkhand and western Oudh, where the Shahaba over battlefield burial-grounds is a phantom army.	vernacular
جبار jabbār	Orion	'the giant, the mighty one' Arabic al-jabbār, the giant - one of the two Arabic names of Orion that Urdu inherits. Platts files it in the same entry as the divine epithet 'Omnipotent', which is how the word is otherwise met in Urdu.	vernacular
جوزا jauzā	Orion	Arabic al-jawzāʼ In Urdu jauzā covers both the zodiac sign Gemini and the constellation Orion - the classical Arabic ambiguity carried over whole. Fallon (p. 1072) gives it as the Arabic equivalent of Hindi mithun, Gemini.	vernacular
کـﮩکشاں kahkashāṅ	The Milky Way	'the straw-drag' - kāh 'straw' + kashān 'dragging' The Persian image: the sky is streaked where someone dragged a bundle of straw across it. Fallon prints the Hindi equivalent akkās gaṅgā on the same line, which is exactly the two-layer situation this file is built to show. The image is shared with Arabic ṭarīqu't-tabn, 'the road of straw'.	vernacular
گگن کي بچي والي مرغي gagaṇ ke bachche wālī murġhī	The Pleiades	'the hen and chickens of the sky' The fuller form of the preceding, with gagan 'sky' prefixed. Shakespear's dakh. tag is a genuine regional flag: several of these furniture-and-farmyard sky names reach him through Deccani Urdu.	folk
پروين parvīn	The Pleiades	Persian name of the Pleiades The Persian counterpart of s̤uraiyā, equally at home in Urdu and equally common as a woman's name.	vernacular
ثريا s̤uraiyā	The Pleiades	diminutive of Arabic tharwā 'abundance' The central Arabic star name naturalised in Urdu, also as a woman's given name. The extended form ʻaqd-i-s̤uraiyā, 'the necklace of the Thurayyā', is what Fallon offers as the Arabic equivalent of Hindi guchchā tārā.	vernacular
جدي jadī	The pole star	'the kid, the young he-goat' The Arabic al-jady, the same word as the zodiac sign Capricorn, used for the pole star itself - a name that pins the star rather than the constellation.	vernacular
قطبي quṭbī tārā	The pole star	'the polar star' A hybrid: Arabic quṭb 'pivot, pole' with the Indic word tārā 'star'. The naked Arabic quṭb alone is also used for the pole star (Platts p. 792; Fallon p. 888).	vernacular
بنات banātu'n-naʻsh	Ursa Major (the Big Dipper)	'the daughters of the bier' The classical Arabic reading: four stars form the naʻsh, a bier, and the three ahead of it are the mourning daughters. Structurally identical to palang tīn ćor - four stars of furniture, three figures at them - which is why the two coexist so easily.	vernacular
گردانك gardānak	Ursa Major (the Big Dipper)	diminutive of gardān 'turner, that which turns' Named for their function: the two stars that swing round the pole and point to it.	vernacular
پلنگ تين چور palang tīn ćor	Ursa Major (the Big Dipper)	'the bedstead and three thieves' The single best folk name in the whole file: the four-star bowl is a charpoy and the three handle stars are thieves creeping up on it. R. C. Temple (Panjab Notes and Queries II.83) thought the image reached Hindustani from Turki, where the Qazaq name is likewise 'the seven thieves' who try to steal a horse from the Little Bear.	folk
سہا suhā	Ursa Major (the Big Dipper)	'the forgotten one' (from Arabic sahw 'to be forgetful, to be overlooked') The Arabic naked-eye test star, the faint companion of Mizar, taken into Urdu with its etymology intact - it is 'the one you overlook'. This is the exact functional counterpart of Sanskrit Arundhatī, likewise the tiny companion pointed out as a test.	vernacular
فرقدان farqadān	Ursa Minor	'the two calves' (dual of farqad 'a calf') The Arabic al-farqadān, the pair that circles close to the pole. Shakespear (1834, p. 1258) muddles them as 'Two stars near the pole, the greater and lesser bears'; Platts has the identification right.	vernacular
نسر nasru'l-wāqiʻ	Vega	'the falling vulture' The Arabic name that gives English 'Vega'. Its pair, nasru'ṭ-ṭāʼir 'the flying eagle', is Altair; Platts calls the dual nasrain 'the constellations of the Eagle and the Lyre'.	vernacular
زهره zǒhra	Venus	'the shining one' The standard Urdu name of the planet, from the same root as the compliment zǒhra-rū, 'Venus-faced'. Its Persian doublet is nāhīd (Platts p. 1120, from Avestan Anāhitā), and the Persian poets' irreverent name for it, lūlī-i-falak, 'heaven's dancing-girl', is also in Platts (p. 970).	vernacular

Sources

John T. Platts, A Dictionary of Urdu, Classical Hindi and English (London, 1884), s.v. sitāra, p. 637 link
John T. Platts, A Dictionary of Urdu, Classical Hindi and English (London, 1884), s.v. nasr, p. 1138 link
John T. Platts, A Dictionary of Urdu, Classical Hindi and English (London, 1884), s.v. suhail, p. 707 link
John T. Platts, A Dictionary of Urdu, Classical Hindi and English (London, 1884), s.v. ʻaiyūq, p. 768 link
John T. Platts, A Dictionary of Urdu, Classical Hindi and English (London, 1884), s.v. shihāb, p. 738 link
John T. Platts, A Dictionary of Urdu, Classical Hindi and English (London, 1884), s.v. jabbār, p. 375 link
John T. Platts, A Dictionary of Urdu, Classical Hindi and English (London, 1884), s.v. jauzā, p. 397 link
S. W. Fallon, A New Hindustani-English Dictionary (Banaras/London, 1879), s.v. kahkashāṅ', p. 970 link
John Shakespear, A Dictionary, Hindustani and English, 3rd ed. (London, 1834), s.v. gagaṇ, p. 1451 link
John T. Platts, A Dictionary of Urdu, Classical Hindi and English (London, 1884), s.v. parvīn, p. 258 link
John T. Platts, A Dictionary of Urdu, Classical Hindi and English (London, 1884), s.v. s̤uraiyā, p. 368 link
John T. Platts, A Dictionary of Urdu, Classical Hindi and English (London, 1884), s.v. jadī, p. 378 link
John T. Platts, A Dictionary of Urdu, Classical Hindi and English (London, 1884), s.v. quṭbī, p. 792 link
John T. Platts, A Dictionary of Urdu, Classical Hindi and English (London, 1884), s.v. banāt, p. 168 link
John T. Platts, A Dictionary of Urdu, Classical Hindi and English (London, 1884), s.v. gardānak, p. 903 link
John Shakespear, A Dictionary, Hindustani and English, 3rd ed. (London, 1834), s.v. palang, p. 1949 link
John T. Platts, A Dictionary of Urdu, Classical Hindi and English (London, 1884), s.v. suhā, p. 704 link
John T. Platts, A Dictionary of Urdu, Classical Hindi and English (London, 1884), s.v. farqadān, p. 779 link
John T. Platts, A Dictionary of Urdu, Classical Hindi and English (London, 1884), s.v. zǒhra, p. 619 link