The True Meaning of AI

What's in a name?

The Spanish tennis champion Carlos Alcaraz has just won Wimbledon 2024. I wrote this piece last year which discussed the origin of his name from the place name Alcaraz. Most Spanish proper nouns and place-names beginning with Al- derive from Arabic words coined during Moorish rule (8th to 15th centuries): al is the Arabic definite article, ‘the’. So Almeria comes from al mariyya (‘the watchtower’), Alicante from al liqant (‘the bright’, from Latin Lucentum), Albufeira from al buhaira, ‘the lagoon’, Algeciras from al jazira ‘the isle’ (referring to nearby Isla Verde), and Alhambra from al hamra, ‘the red (fort)’.

The name Alcaraz probably derives from al karas, ‘the cherry’ - a word with a lovely etymology of its own (explained in the article). Other English words with Arabic roots include ‘alcove’ from al qobba, vault, ‘alchemy’ from al khimia, ‘chemistry’ (adopted from Greek chymia, ‘mixing’), algebra from al jabr, ‘reinstatement’ (of parts into a whole), and ‘algorithm’ from the name of the ninth-century mathematician who invented algebra, al Kwarizmi (‘the Chorasmian’).

The best-known borrowing is ‘alcohol’, from Arabic al kohl, a word originally used for the powdered cosmetic (stibnite) used as black eyeliner (‘mascara’ is also derived from Arabic maskhara, meaning ‘clown’). ‘Al kohl’ was then applied generally to purified products, and was adopted in England to mean ‘alcohol’ in the eighteenth century.

But one may be seduced by false etymologies. ‘Alexander’ became al-Iskander in Arabic, but only after Alexander the Great founded Alexandria (Al-Iskandariyah) in 330 BC. The name, formed from the Greek roots alex- and andr- and meaning ‘defender of men’, is found in Homer’s Iliad of around 700 BC. Even earlier, it’s the name of the king of Wilusa (Ilios, Troy), transliterated Alaksandus on a Hittite tablet found in Anatolia (Turkey) dating from around 1280 BC. From around 1300 BC, a tablet from Amnisos on Crete with the earliest form of Greek script, Linear B, shows the name (below) transliterated a-re-ka-sa-da-ra – Alexandra – which is probably, therefore, the oldest continuously used name in the world.