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اتوار 31 اکتوبر 2004Sunday, October 31, 2004

Zakaria, Zachary, Zachariah and More

I was wondering about my name which by virtue of being in the Bible and the Quran has spread into many languages. So I tried to find the original Hebrew version. This is how it is written I think.

זכריה

If I have made a mistake, please let me know. These Hebrew characters look too similar to each other to my untrained, wary of new languages eye. I do, however, recognize some of the letter names (Alef, He, Vav, Kaf, Mem, Nun, Ayin, Pe, Fe, Qof, Shin) as similar to Urdu ones (Alif, Hay, Vow, Kaf, Meem, Noon, Ayin, Pay, Fay, Qaf, Sheen).

From Hebrew to Greek:

ζαχαριασ

And on to English with Zechariah, Zachariah, Zachary, Zachery, Zackary, Zackery, Zach, Zack, Zak, and other variants.

It also passed from Hebrew to Arabic and is mentioned in the Quran as the father of John the Baptist. My name in Arabic and Urdu is written as follows:

زکریا

There are multiple English transliterations of that, but I use “Zakaria.”

One interesting thing about the Hebrew name is that its root words are zakar (זכר), which means “to remember or mention” or “to make remembrance”, and Yah (יה), which is the shortened version of Jehovah (God). Arabic probably got the word “zikr” (ذکر) from the same root. However, notice that in Arabic, zikr (ذکر) and Zakaria (زکریا) have different first letters.

I know this post is lame and not of any interest to anyone but me, but I am on the road to Atlanta right now. You’ll have to wait until I get to Atlanta for more blogging.

Posted by Zack at October 31, 2004 10:51 AM in Life , Urdu

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Comments

The greek one sounds like:
زاخاری
or
زاخاریاس
(Zacharious)

Bon voyage

Posted by: kianoush (113 comments) at October 31, 2004 1:30 PM

ز and ذ are pronounced differently. Maybe that is why the starting letter got changed with time.

Posted by: Jalal (11 comments) at October 31, 2004 4:00 PM

At least to one reader it’s going to be of some interest.

Zack in Britain or Zachary in the States or Zikrya in Pakistani or Zakaria in Persia; I really love my name (though I hate it when people say Zach instead of Zack)

Posted by: Zachary Latif (13 comments) at October 31, 2004 4:46 PM

i really love the name zakariya and we were even going to name our son that but had to settle for zaki because we didn’t want to have an often mispronounced and misspelled name, not that zaki (pronounced zucky) isn’t already being pronounced weirdly, as is our daughter’s seemingly easy name (aliyah, often shortened to allie). we’ve also had to deal with my name (umair) and my wife’s name (sadia) misunderstood almost all of the time.

Posted by: Umair (6 comments) at October 31, 2004 9:58 PM

kianoush: That seems correct.

Jalal: Not in Urdu or Farsi they are not. They are definitely different in Arabic.

Zachary: :-)

Umair: Pronunciation is the most common problem with such ethnic names.

Posted by: Zack [TypeKey Profile Page] (1765 comments) at November 3, 2004 9:05 PM

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