Ramadan: Its Etymology from Bill Casselman's Canadian Word of the Day & Words of the World

The Etymology of Ramadan

The Arabic trilitteral verbal stem is /r-m-d/, said, with one set of vowel pointings, as “ramida.” Its prime meaning is ‘be burning hot (so that the ground is dry).’

Ramadan in Arabic is رَمَضانُ (ramadānu)

Compare one of the cognate Arabic nouns ramad ‘dryness, parchedness.’ Ramadan was originally the name of the ninth month of the Islamic lunar calendar and its name described the weather and the condition of the earth and of the soil and of human travelers during this scorching Middle Eastern month. The Koranic religious metaphors in Arabic about the burning-cleansing by Allah of the soul’s impurities through fasting etc. etc. came AFTER the weather-descriptive naming of the month.

Ramada Inn? No!

With no sacrilege intended, let us indulge a brief moment of disambiguation. So linguists now like to term: making clear that similar forms differ in their meanings, that is, the word names the removal of ambiguity. Contrary to the notions of some Wikipedia readers, Wikiwonks did not invent the word disambiguation. For that useful term, English is indebted to British systematic botanist George Bentham who coined it in his 1827 book Outline of a New System of Logic, with a critical examination of Dr Whately’s Elements of Logic. The Bentham family was renowned. George’s father was the brother of the English Utilitarian philosopher and social reformer Jeremy Bentham. Jeremy Bentham was one of the most delightful and interesting of British moral philosophers. Do investigate his eccentric life and his influential writings. Start here: http://www.iep.utm.edu/b/bentham.htm

The well-known chain of hotels and motels, Ramada Inn, bears no relationship to the Islamic month of fasting, although it must be admitted that after one of Ramada Inn’s “free” sticky-bun breakfasts, fasting may be quickly selected as a palate-saving alternative.

Ramada Inn features ramada, first a Spanish adjective ‘made of branches,’ then a Spanish noun, una ramada, for a temporary, open-air shelter built of branches (Spanish rama ‘branch’). In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries in Mexico and later in the southwestern United States, ramadas were used to shelter farm workers during harvest time. The Spanish word rama is derived from the Latin noun ramus ‘branch, bough, stick.’ This root appears in the modern English word ramification, literally in medieval Latin ‘a forming of many branches.’ Botany has the learned adjective ramose ‘abounding in branches.’

In the American southwest, early in the 20th century,

rancheros (ranch hands) cool off in the shade of a ramada.

In the right hand corner of the picture, note their cowboy hats drying off on a stump.

During Ramadan

Koranic teaching says that, in this ninth month, as the Prophet Mohammed wandered in the desert, the angel Gabriel appeared to him and gave him a golden tablet upon which reposed the first few verses of the Koran, the first to be revealed to Mohammed. The fasting of pious Muslims that takes place during the month of Ramadan is to celebrate this and to teach the Koranic virtues of self-restraint, patience, trust in Allah and trust in oneself, for only Allah and the faster know truly if the faster has observed the fast. Allah grants to one who has fasted properly through the entire month a certain amnesty for past sins.

Ramadan mubarak! I wish my Muslim readers a blessed Ramadan.

To read about some related Semitic roots of mubarak, click here.