But there are people whose name is NOT central:
Shawnee "southerners"
Japanese "easterners"
Choson (Korea) "morning calm" i.e. "the cool
easterners"
Maghreb al aqsa (Morocco) "the far west"
Shariqah (Sharjah) "east"
Norway "North Way"
Perhaps, provided Patrick's etymology is correct, Arab
may have referred to the original Semitic speakers who
crossed from Africa to Asia via the Bab al-Mandeb or
Sinai
In any case, I don't think mountaineer would work. The
Arabs were from N. Arabia, which AFAIK is flat. The
south is mountainous but they didn't speak Arabic
there until after the Islamic expansion
--- "fournet.arnaud" <
fournet.arnaud@...>
wrote:
>
> > ===================
> H1/2/3 - it makes no difference; they were all
> phonetically [h].
>
> This [h] derived from earlier [?, h, H].
>
> ============
>
> Sorry
> But I disagree with the most extreme force.
>
> Arnaud
>
> =============
> ***
>
> To people living in Egypt or around the
> Mediterranean, Arabia would be
> 'East'.
> Patrick
> ***
> =========
>
> I suppose Arab people don't describe themselves
> as being *east* of themselves.
>
> Autocht-h-onous
> hence not east west south north of somebody else.
>
> Arnaud.
>
> =========
>
>
____________________________________________________________________________________
Be a better friend, newshound, and
know-it-all with Yahoo! Mobile. Try it now.
http://mobile.yahoo.com/;_ylt=Ahu06i62sR8HDtDypao8Wcj9tAcJ