October 19, 2006
The ferenji debate continues
Vandia takes up the debate on where ferengis come from - not France apparently.
NO- Ferenj is essentially an old word. It predates the French. The French are not the first Europeans for that matter. But Ferenj etymologically is an old Arabic word meaning European. It somehow survived the ages and now has been immortalized in the streets of Addis. So please don't say it is from French.
The above is a comment under the February post Up from the comments section.
Posted by aheavens at October 19, 2006 5:07 AM
Comments
(Erm, just to show how complicated things can get, when I first saw the term on this blog, I couldn't for the life of me understand why you were bringing aliens from Star Trek into it. All I knew about them was that they were a dwarfish, big-eared race of super-capitalists. It took me the longest time to figure out it had nothing to do with that. You were talking about _another_ race of dwarfish, big-eared super-capitalists.)
Posted by: quixote at October 23, 2006 10:04 PM
"Ferenj etymologically is an old Arabic word meaning European"
No, the old arabic word means "franks" wich represents the people who "established lasting realm (sometimes referred to as Francia) in an area which eventually covered most of modern-day France, the Low Countries, and the western regions of Germany (Franconia, Rhineland, Hesse), forming the historic kernel of all these modern countries."
see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Franks
so ferendj for french is not a bad definition.
Posted by: visitor at October 24, 2006 11:08 AM