Talk:խնջլոզ

@Fay Freak, does the Aramaic word have a transparent Semitic etymology? I also found Arabic خُنْثَى (ḵunṯā, “Asphodelus ramosus; Ornithogalum stachyoides”). @Calak, the Assyrian and Azerbaijani point to your region. Perhaps you know a related Central Kurdish word? --Vahag (talk) 18:06, 5 July 2020 (UTC)

Nothing found :( --Calak (talk) 12:41, 23 July 2020 (UTC)

Thanks for checking. --Vahag (talk) 15:02, 23 July 2020 (UTC)

I found South Azerbaijani synonyms هنقیلیش، خنقیلیش on Wikipedia. --Vahag (talk) 19:40, 5 July 2020 (UTC)

@Vahagn Petrosyan: Probably not transparent, considering the sheer length of the word, as it looks like a compound and in Semitic one does not compound. Otherwise you might try various combinations of meanings CAL gives for the consonants e.g. ḥng; it depends on what properties you associate with star-of-Bethlehem and mandrake, this makes all intransparent for a 21st-century man, sorry, I have no thoughts on that, and I have hardly ever looked into Assyrian Neo-Aramaic and its grammar. The Arabic word you link there is just the word for “tranny, hermaphrodite etc.” (related to أُنْثَى (ʔunṯā, “female”)), so it occurs in many plant names. Fay Freak (talk) 23:08, 5 July 2020 (UTC)

Alternatively we may connect with Persian خنگ (xeng, “white; gray; green?”) because of the color or with the homonymous Persian خنگ (xeng, “dumb, stupid”) because mandrake is used as a narcotic. --Vahag (talk) 09:28, 6 July 2020 (UTC)

Older somewhat similar long words for Ornithogalum in Aramaic are treated at

• Löw, Immanuel (1928) Die Flora der Juden‎^[1] (in German), volume 1, Wien und Leipzig: R. Löwit, pages 600–602
• Löw, Immanuel (1924) Die Flora der Juden‎^[2] (in German), volume 2, Wien und Leipzig: R. Löwit, pages 187–188
• Löw, Immanuel (1881) Aramæische Pflanzennamen‎^[3] (in German), Leipzig: Wilhelm Engelmann, page 164

which are related to the Semitic root for milk and univerbized with some other words, but maybe aren’t related to the forms on this Armenian word. No similarities for mandrake in Löw, except the mentioned Neo-Syriac word. Fay Freak (talk) 12:10, 7 July 2020 (UTC)

Thanks. I think the alternative form you added to ܚܸܢܓ̰ܵܠܵܘܣܵܐ (ḥinjālāwsā) is plural. Löw references Maclean, who has ḥinjilūsī ‘mandrakes’. If it is the regular plural, it is not an alternative form. --Vahag (talk) 12:33, 7 July 2020 (UTC)