[Avodah] Names in Aramaic and other languages

[Akiva Miller]

.
[My questions here are more linguistic, and less Torah, so I considered
posting this to Areivim. But I'm hoping for responses that are based on
Onkelos' translation style, so that's why I'm sending it to Avodah.]

In my learning of Onkelos, I have noticed that it is not unusual for a
place to have one name in Hebrew, and a seemingly unrelated name in
Aramaic. The most common example, I think, is Kadesh, which is consistently
translated as R'kam (Bereshis 16:14, Bamidbar 20:1, and elsewhere). But
there are many other examples, like Ar, which is translated into Aramaic as
L'chayas (Bamidbar 21:15, Devarim 2:9, and elsewhere).

This did not really surprise me. This phenomenon is not exclusive to
Hebrew/Aramaic. After all, Germany, Allemagne, Deutschland, Németország and
Ashkenaz all refer to the same place, but they don't have any connection
which is obvious to this layman.

I began to wonder if this also happens with names of *people*. Is there any
person in the Torah whose name is vastly different in Onkelos?

I do not recall seeing any examples of such people. But then I realized
that this too is universal. The world accepts the idea of different names
for places, but people don't seem to accept anything beyond minor
pronunciation adaptations. Moshe/Moses, Carlos/Charles, and Ya'akov/Yankef
are all seen as variants of the same name, *not* as translations. Does
anyone know of exceptions to this rule? Can anyone give me examples (in
Hebrew, Aramaic, or any other language) of translated names which are
totally unrelated?

I asked this of my local AI, and the best it offered was Christopher
Columbus / Cristóbal Colón, which seem too closely related in my opinion.
At first, I thought that Jacob/Santiago might be what I'm looking for, but
a bit of research revealed that Santiago is a shortening of the Latin
"Sanctus Iacobus". Yaakov/James are also related, once I remembered how the
Y and J sounds are often exchanged, as well as B and M.

Akiva Miller

Postscript:

All the above has been on my mind for a few years, but yesterday I came
across an anomaly which might count as "the exception that proves the
rule." Bereshis 10:6 reads: "Uvnay Cham - Kush, UMitzrayim, UFut,
UCh'naan." Onkelos copies it exactly, not changing even one vowel.
ArtScroll translates it to English as, "The sons of Ham: Cush, Mizraim,
Put, and Canaan." Most of my other English translations were similar, the
only differences being transliteration style (Mizraim/Mitzrayim, Ham/Cham)
and editorial style (sons/descendants; leave out all those vavs, or render
as "and"). The anomaly I found was in the "Michaan Edition" of the Chumash,
published by Chabad/Kehot, which gives this pasuk as: "The sons of Ham were
Kush, Egypt, Put, and Canaan."

I was stunned. Egypt is the translation of the *place* Mitzrayim, but is it
a legitimate translation of the person's name? It turns out that Michaan is
not the only translation to make this choice. BibleHub is a very convenient
website to see a variety of English translations (almost all non-Jewish)
for a single pasuk. https://biblehub.com/genesis/10-6.htm gives 26
translators who chose "Mizraim" (or some other transliteration), and a
surprising 6 who chose to translate this man's name as "Egypt".

Quite a few of Noach's descendants had names which are recognizable to us
as countries: Cush, Canaan, Ashur, Aram, and others. But it seems that only
the land of Mitzrayim (and possibly Ashkenaz?) has different names in other
languages. It's entirely possible that there are others, but I don't see
them because I know very little beyond English and Hebrew. If anyone can
give other examples, I'd like to hear about it.
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