Tobacco (Rolled in cryptography)

[Dominique.Thillaud]

At 16:04 +0200 11/09/97, N. Ganesan wrote:
>Interesting derivation of California! The late Chandrasekarendra
>Sarasvathi of Kanchi Sankaracharya Math also has a derivation for
>Alexander. Printed many times in magazines like Kalaimakal
>and his collected volumes of speeches.
>
>A rough translation: "Many school children in India cannot pronounce
>the word 'school' right. They call it as 'iscool'. In the same manner,
>Skanda gets pronounced as 'Iskanda'. We all know that 'Al' is
>the equivalent of 'The' in Arabic. Al + Iskanda ==> Alexander".
>
>Note the switching of places between Sikandar and Alexander too!
>
>N. Ganesan
>nas_ng at lms420.jsc.nasa.gov

        Alas, that's not true!
        Alexandros is an old Greek word, compound of anEr 'man, heroe' and
alexO 'to protect'. Both are respectively connected with Sanskrit nara and
rakSati. Before Philip's son, this was too an other name of the Trojan
Paris who raped Helen.

        The Macedonian king has established many towns with his name:
Alexandria, Alexandrette, &c.
        Turks abbreviate the long borrowed names and don't accept names
beginning with two consonants: Konstantinopolis becomes Stanpol, and with a
prefixed 'i' becomes Istambul; Smyrne becomes Izmir and an Alexandrie
becomes Iskenderum.
        Nothing to do with Skanda (there is evidence Alexander was not an
Indian but a Greek) nor the arabic article (there were no Arabs here at
this time) nor a new Indian pronunciation (Does say the children *iSkanda
?). Your source was not very well informed about the Mediterranean
languages ...

        Regards,
Dominique

Dominique THILLAUD
Universite' de Nice Sophia-Antipolis, France