From "decryption" to "translation"

[geoffreycaveney]

Geoffrey: Only one or two out of about 65 star name labels end in [-in]. I would not be surprised if one or two star names just happened to end in "-n", in Greek or in any language, especially if the names were borrowed from Hebrew, or Arabic, or some other language.

If they are labels (nouns, names), then MORE THAN LIKELY they are loanwords from Arabic. MOST star names were Arabic in the Middle Ages. Even in England, which was far removed from the Arabic world, most of the star names (among scholars and scribes who created and copied manuscripts) were Arabic.

I have lists of the old star names. Mostly Arabic. Many modern star names still go by the old Arabic names.

It's very tempting to think they are Arabic and that ot = "Al" but there are still issues to resolve (why so many of them with ot? why is the rest of the "name" so repetitious? so short? etc.).

Good point, I agree about the Arabic star names. However, in Arabic the "al-" article prefix often assimilates to the following consonant, so that "al-d" can become "ad-d", "al-k" can become "ak-k", "al-s" can become "as-s", etc. In such cases, the "l" in "al-" would not necessarily show up in the name at all, depending on how the borrowing was written.