Personal name · Semitic

JA-SA-MU

'He hears'—yaqtal hypocoristic personal name with frozen nominative -ū

Reading
yaśmaʿū
Type
Personal name Candidate
Language
Semitic Candidate
Sites
Zakros
Attestations
1
Lexicon
JA-SA-MU

Commentary

√š-m-ʿ ‘to hear’, ʿayin unwritten: yaqtul *yašmuʿ, as in Ishmael (Yišmāʿēl), Simeon (Šimʿōn), Samuel (Šəmūʾēl), Punic ŠMʿ-BʿL, a sentence name without the deity; or the yaqtal class with frozen nominative -ū (APNM pp. 104–15), the Linear A shape of the hypocoristicon Ya-ás-ma-ḫu-u[m] (APNM p. 132). ZA 15a, a wine allocation, 5 units, beside SI-PI-KI and SA-MI-DA-E.

Compared forms

From the lexicon entry JA-SA-MU.

  • Hebrewיִשְׁמָעֵאל (Yišmāʿēl / Ishmael) = "El hears"—√š-m-ʿ + ʾēl; שִׁמְעוֹן (Šimʿōn / Simeon) = "hearing"; שְׁמוּאֵל (Šəmūʾēl / Samuel) = "name/heard of El"
  • Ugariticyšmʿ—theophoric PN element in KTU personal names; šmʿ "to hear" in Ba’al cycle
  • Akkadianšemûšemû "to hear"; Šamû-Adda (EA 325) = "Addu has heard"—same root reversed
  • Punic√š-m-ʿ in ŠMʿ-BʿL "Baal has heard" (Benz 1972); one of the productive PN roots in Carthaginian epigraphy
  • Arabicsamiʿasamiʿa "to hear"; Ismāʿīl (Ishmael)
  • AmoriteYa-ás-ma-ḫu-um, Yasmaḫ-Addu (Mari, APNM p. 132)
Linear A Lexicon