Arabic Names for America

Misr is not a native name but a purely Arabic one, given after the conquest.
There is not a general rule. Arabs used geographical names (Maghrib) descriptive names in Arabic (Sudan, from Bilad al-Sudan, "Land of the Blacks") and, more often, roughly transliterated local names like Fars, Ifriqiyya, Andalus, Siqilliya.
The most likely ideas I have are al-Bilad al-(something) (the land of ... ) or al-Maghrib (something (the ... West) which are both somewhat descriptive.
If the discoverer goes there to reach the "Indies" (unlikely) something like "China of the West" is possible (it would Sin Gharbi, I think, or Sin al-Gharb).
Al-Bilad al-jadid would mean "new land/country" and is quite possible too.
"ba'd al-Bahr" or "ba'd al-Muhit" are my ideas for "beyond the Ocean". It would begin as a descriptive phrase after noun such as "ard" or "bilad" or pronouns like "ma" ("ma ba'd al-Muhit" would mean "what's beyond the Ocean" more or less) but after a time would be used alone probably.

e bravo Falecius. Colto, analitico e inventivo.
 
Don't you think that whatever they named it, the Europeans would rename it to suit them better once they landed. I'm sure the Vikings named the continent before 1492.
 
Don't you think that whatever they named it, the Europeans would rename it to suit them better once they landed. I'm sure the Vikings named the continent before 1492.

I think OP is assuming an Arab discovery of the Americas, with Europeans following. As Europeans are quite happy to re-use names already available, they'll mangle the Arabic name into something they can pronounce and use that rather than have to come up with their own name.
 
There's always al-Waqwaq.

It's somewhere east of China, there's lots of gold and ebony, and they probably don't have the linguists to tell them that ibn Kurdadhbih was talking about Japan.
 

Thande

Donor
Interesting question...there is the possibility, of course, of it being named for its discoverer like OTL. There is a fair amount of precedent for this in Arabic place names, though usually for smaller features than continents or countries.

Misr is not a native name but a purely Arabic one, given after the conquest.

Er...no. The rest of your post seems well informed, but that's not true. Misr is just the Arabic equivalent of Hebrew Mizraim, which existed as a name at least two thousand years before Mohammed and probably more.
 
Interesting question...there is the possibility, of course, of it being named for its discoverer like OTL. There is a fair amount of precedent for this in Arabic place names, though usually for smaller features than continents or countries.



Er...no. The rest of your post seems well informed, but that's not true. Misr is just the Arabic equivalent of Hebrew Mizraim, which existed as a name at least two thousand years before Mohammed and probably more.

In Arabic, Misr meant a military camp for garrison and conquest troops in the first Arab expansion. I've been always taught that the country took the name by extention from one of those camps (namely, al-Fustat). I'll check tomorrow in my universitiy's library.
 
Er...no. The rest of your post seems well informed, but that's not true. Misr is just the Arabic equivalent of Hebrew Mizraim, which existed as a name at least two thousand years before Mohammed and probably more.

My bad. I stand corrected. (still, it was not a native name).
 
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I would assume something highly Islamic and possibly after whoever the Caliph of the Abbasids were at the time. I say this because the only time that Arabs could have possibly discovered the continent was during the Islamic Golden Age during Abbasid rule.:cool:
 
I would assume something highly Islamic and possibly after whoever the Caliph of the Abbasids were at the time. I say this because the only time that Arabs could have possibly discovered the continent was during the Islamic Golden Age during Abbasid rule.:cool:

Not necessarly. Abbasid control over the Atlantic shores was non-existent in Andalus and tenous and short-lived at best in Morocco. The Muslim Far West was generally a stronghold of their rivals.
Both areas experienced their own height later than the Abbasid-ruled provinces, when actually the Abbasids were losing actual political power. An Abbasid Caliph figurehead, though, was still in place until the Mongol invasion and it in this sense the whole "Islamic Golden Age" can be described as "Abbasid period". The Islamic discovery is likely to happen during the Abbasid rule (probably when it was already nominal) but also likely not on their behalf.
 
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