Etymologically
Log in

שם

This is the current revision of this entry, as edited by bogdan on 1 November 2026 at 06:52. This address is a permanent link to this version.
Changes in this edit History

שם1 name

Pronunciation

  • Tiberian: šēm[1]
  • Samaritan reading tradition: šam, with suffix šēmu, plural šēmot[2]

Forms

שֵׁם (šēm) noun, masculine, plural שֵׁמוֹת[1][3] Construct שֵׁם, before maqqeph also שֶׁם־; with suffixes שְׁמִי, שִׁמְךָ, pausal שְׁמֶךָ, שְׁמוֹ; plural שֵׁמוֹת, construct שְׁמוֹת.[4][5] The archaic form šəmû is the first part of the name שְׁמוּאֵל (šəmûʾēl).[4][6]

Etymology

The noun “name” is inherited from Proto-Semitic *šim- (“name”), one of the words found throughout Semitic.[7][3] It is Akkadian šumu, Ugaritic šm, Phoenician šm, Aramaic שְׁמָא (šəmā), Classical Syriac ܫܡܵܐ (šmā), Arabic اِسْم (ism) and Sabaean s¹m.[4][8][9][10][11] Wiktionary carries it further back to Proto-Afroasiatic *sim- (“name”).[3] The Ugaritic and Amorite spellings with /u/, like Akkadian, support an old vowel u beside i.[4]

HALOT calls it a primary noun.[4] BDB leaves the root unknown and lists older attempts to derive it from a verb: Gesenius's root שמה (šmh) and the comparison with Arabic وَسَمَ (wasama, “to brand, mark”), which Klein also reports.[5][12] Gesenius–Buhl doubts the Arabic link.[13] שָׁם (šām, “there”) has a separate source and is listed apart.[14][15]

Earliest recorded meaning

Among the inscriptions, Davies reads lšm ʾl bym mlḥmh “for the name of El on the day of battle” at Kuntillet ʿAjrud, dated to the 9th or early 8th century BC, and an Arad letter of the 6th century BC tells its reader ktb šm hym “write the name of the day”, that is, the date.[16][17][4][18][19] In the Bible the archaic Song of the Sea has YHWH šəmô “YHWH is his name” (Exodus 15:3).[20][1]

Semantic evolution

In the Bible a name belongs to people, animals, towns and rivers, and to give one is qārāʾ šēm “to call a name”.[4][5] A name is also standing and reputation: the builders of Babel want to “make a name” for themselves (Genesis 11:4), an idiom HALOT compares with Akkadian šuma šakānu;[11] šēm rāʿ is a bad name (Deuteronomy 22:14).[4][11] It is what lives on after death, paired with posterity, šēm ūšəʾār (Isaiah 14:22), and with a monument, yāḏ wāšēm (Isaiah 56:5).[4] The name of YHWH stands for God himself, his might and presence: one acts ləmaʿan šəmî “for my name's sake” (Isaiah 48:9), and God's name is in his messenger (Exodus 23:21).[4] šēm hayyôm “the name of the day” is the date (Ezekiel 24:2), as in the Arad letter.[4]

The Septuagint renders it by Ancient Greek ὄνομα (ónoma).[1] In Rabbinic Hebrew haššēm “the Name” stands for God.[5][12] Today Modern Hebrew שם (shem) keeps the word.[3]

Timeline

  • 9th or early 8th century BC – lšm ʾl at Kuntillet ʿAjrud, in Davies's reading.[18][16]
  • 6th century BC – šm hym “the date” in an Arad letter.[19][17][4]
  • Archaic Hebrew poetry – YHWH šəmô “YHWH is his name” in the Song of the Sea (Exodus 15:3).[20][1]
  • 3rd–2nd century BC – the Septuagint translates it as Ancient Greek ὄνομα (ónoma).[21][1]
  • 2nd century BC – 2nd century AD – the Dead Sea Scrolls use it often, also in the non-biblical texts.[22][23]

Meanings

Noun

  1. a name, of a person, an animal, a town or a river.[4][5]
  2. reputation, fame: a good or a bad name.[4]
  3. memory after death, posterity; a memorial.[4]
  4. the name of YHWH, standing for God himself and his presence.[4][5]
  5. šēm hayyôm: the date.[4]

Descendants

  • Modern Hebrew שם (shem)[3]

שם2 there

Pronunciation

  • Tiberian: šām, with the ending of direction šāmmâ[1][14]
  • Samaritan reading tradition: šamma for both forms[2][14]

Forms

שָׁם (šām) adverb[1] With the ending of direction שָׁמָּה “thither”, and with the preposition מִשָּׁם “from there”.[14][15]

Etymology

The adverb “there” is an old Central Semitic word: Ugaritic ṯm, Aramaic תַּמָּה (tammâ), Classical Syriac ܬܰܡܳܢ (tammān) and Arabic ثَمَّ (ṯamma).[24][25][15] The Ugaritic, Arabic and later Aramaic forms show that its first consonant was /ṯ/, which became /š/ in Hebrew and /t/ in Aramaic.[24][15] The same word is Moabite šm and Phoenician šm.[14][26]

Its origin is uncertain: HALOT and DULAT compare Akkadian šumma (“if”) and Arabic ثُمَّ (ṯumma, “then”), but Kogan rejects both, explaining the Akkadian word as a conditional particle and the Arabic one as perhaps a form of the numeral “two”.[24][14][25]

Earliest recorded meaning

The oldest dated records are letters of the 6th century BC: Lachish letter 4 reports ʾyn šm ʾdm “there is nobody there” and later šmh “thither”, and an Arad letter ends with šmh “to there”.[27][28][29][14][19] In the Bible the archaic Blessing of Jacob has miššām “from there” (Genesis 49:24).[20][1]

Semantic evolution

In the Bible it answers both “where?” and “whither?”, the second also with the ending -â;[30] ʾăšer … šām makes a relative “where”.[15][30] In poetry it can also point to a moment, “then”, as in Psalm 14:5.[30] The Septuagint renders it by Ancient Greek ἐκεῖ (ekeî), and miššām by Ancient Greek ἐκεῖθεν (ekeîthen).[1] Today Modern Hebrew שם (sham) keeps it.[3]

Timeline

  • 6th century BC – šm and šmh in Lachish letter 4 and an Arad letter.[19][27][29]
  • Archaic Hebrew poetry – miššām in the Blessing of Jacob (Genesis 49:24), šām in the Blessing of Moses (Deuteronomy 33:19, 21).[20][1]
  • 3rd–2nd century BC – the Septuagint translates it as Ancient Greek ἐκεῖ (ekeî).[21][1]

Meanings

Adverb

  1. there, in that place.[15][14]
  2. (with verbs of motion, also šāmmâ) thither, to that place.[15][30]
  3. (poetic) then, at that time.[30]

Descendants

  • Modern Hebrew שם (sham)[3]

Usage notes

The Biblical Aramaic noun שֻׁם šum “name” of Ezra and Daniel is the Aramaic word, not a use of the Hebrew one.[1][4] The name of Noah's son Shem is listed by HALOT and BDB under a heading of its own.[31][32]

References

  1. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m Clear Bible (2023–), MACULA Hebrew Linguistic Datasets (Westminster Leningrad Codex, with Greek alignment), github.com/Clear-Bible/macula-hebrew, CC BY 4.0
  2. ^ a b Højgaard, Christian Canu; Naaijer, Martijn; Schorch, Stefan (2023), Text-Fabric Dataset of the Samaritan Pentateuch, Zenodo, doi:10.5281/zenodo.7734632
  3. ^ a b c d e f g Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
  4. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r Koehler, Ludwig; Baumgartner, Walter; Stamm, Johann Jakob (1994–2000), The Hebrew and Aramaic Lexicon of the Old Testament, transl. and ed. M. E. J. Richardson, 5 vols, Leiden: Brill, p. s.v. שֵׁם I
  5. ^ a b c d e f Brown, Francis; Driver, S. R.; Briggs, Charles A. (1906), A Hebrew and English Lexicon of the Old Testament, with an Appendix Containing the Biblical Aramaic, Oxford: Clarendon Press, p. s.v. שֵׁם
  6. ^ Huehnergard, John (2011), "Proto-Semitic Language and Culture" and "Semitic Roots", in The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language, 5th ed., Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, p. šm
  7. ^ Kogan, Leonid (2015), Genealogical Classification of Semitic: The Lexical Isoglosses, Berlin: De Gruyter, p. 33
  8. ^ Militarev, Alexander, et al., Semitic Etymology (database semet), The Tower of Babel (StarLing), starling.rinet.ru, p. 602
  9. ^ del Olmo Lete, Gregorio; Sanmartín, Joaquín (2015), A Dictionary of the Ugaritic Language in the Alphabetic Tradition, 3rd ed., transl. W. G. E. Watson, Leiden: Brill, p. s.v. šm I
  10. ^ Sokoloff, Michael (2009), A Syriac Lexicon, Winona Lake: Eisenbrauns; Piscataway: Gorgias Press, p. 1569
  11. ^ a b c Tawil, Hayim ben Yosef (2009), An Akkadian Lexical Companion for Biblical Hebrew: Etymological-Semantic and Idiomatic Equivalents, Jersey City: Ktav, p. 404
  12. ^ a b Klein, Ernest (1987), A Comprehensive Etymological Dictionary of the Hebrew Language for Readers of English, Jerusalem: Carta; Haifa: University of Haifa, p. s.v. שֵׁם I
  13. ^ Gesenius, Wilhelm; Buhl, Frants (1915), Hebräisches und aramäisches Handwörterbuch über das Alte Testament, 17th ed., Leipzig: F. C. W. Vogel, p. s.v. שֵׁם
  14. ^ a b c d e f g h Koehler, Ludwig; Baumgartner, Walter; Stamm, Johann Jakob (1994–2000), The Hebrew and Aramaic Lexicon of the Old Testament, transl. and ed. M. E. J. Richardson, 5 vols, Leiden: Brill, p. s.v. שָׁם
  15. ^ a b c d e f g Brown, Francis; Driver, S. R.; Briggs, Charles A. (1906), A Hebrew and English Lexicon of the Old Testament, with an Appendix Containing the Biblical Aramaic, Oxford: Clarendon Press, p. s.v. שָׁם
  16. ^ a b Davies, Graham I. (1991), Ancient Hebrew Inscriptions: Corpus and Concordance, vol. 1, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, p. 8.023.2
  17. ^ a b Davies, Graham I. (1991), Ancient Hebrew Inscriptions: Corpus and Concordance, vol. 1, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, p. 2.001.4
  18. ^ a b Sáenz-Badillos, Angel (1993), A History of the Hebrew Language, transl. John Elwolde, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, p. 76
  19. ^ a b c d Sáenz-Badillos, Angel (1993), A History of the Hebrew Language, transl. John Elwolde, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, p. 76–77
  20. ^ a b c d Sáenz-Badillos, Angel (1993), A History of the Hebrew Language, transl. John Elwolde, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, p. 69
  21. ^ a b Sáenz-Badillos, Angel (1993), A History of the Hebrew Language, transl. John Elwolde, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, p. 93
  22. ^ Sáenz-Badillos, Angel (1993), A History of the Hebrew Language, transl. John Elwolde, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, p. 143
  23. ^ Abegg, Martin G.; Jacobs, Jarod; Roorda, Dirk (2022), The Dead Sea Scrolls, Text-Fabric dataset, version 2.0.2, github.com/ETCBC/dss
  24. ^ a b c Kogan, Leonid (2015), Genealogical Classification of Semitic: The Lexical Isoglosses, Berlin: De Gruyter, p. 202
  25. ^ a b del Olmo Lete, Gregorio; Sanmartín, Joaquín (2015), A Dictionary of the Ugaritic Language in the Alphabetic Tradition, 3rd ed., transl. W. G. E. Watson, Leiden: Brill, p. s.v. ṯm
  26. ^ Krahmalkov, Charles R. (2000), Phoenician-Punic Dictionary, Leuven: Peeters (OLA 90), p. s.v. šm IV
  27. ^ a b Davies, Graham I. (1991), Ancient Hebrew Inscriptions: Corpus and Concordance, vol. 1, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, p. 1.004.5
  28. ^ Davies, Graham I. (1991), Ancient Hebrew Inscriptions: Corpus and Concordance, vol. 1, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, p. 1.004.8
  29. ^ a b Davies, Graham I. (1991), Ancient Hebrew Inscriptions: Corpus and Concordance, vol. 1, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, p. 2.024.20
  30. ^ a b c d e Gesenius, Wilhelm; Buhl, Frants (1915), Hebräisches und aramäisches Handwörterbuch über das Alte Testament, 17th ed., Leipzig: F. C. W. Vogel, p. s.v. שָׁם
  31. ^ Koehler, Ludwig; Baumgartner, Walter; Stamm, Johann Jakob (1994–2000), The Hebrew and Aramaic Lexicon of the Old Testament, transl. and ed. M. E. J. Richardson, 5 vols, Leiden: Brill, p. s.v. שֵׁם II
  32. ^ Brown, Francis; Driver, S. R.; Briggs, Charles A. (1906), A Hebrew and English Lexicon of the Old Testament, with an Appendix Containing the Biblical Aramaic, Oxford: Clarendon Press, p. s.v. שֵׁם²