In French Québec we'll call the sun "Galarneau" when it finally pops out after a period of cloudiness - usually in a joking manner...."tiens, Galarneau s'montre le nez" (here, Galarneau is showing his nose) or "tiens, v'la Galarneau." (here, here is Galarneau).

In general it is simply "soleil"

Some Sanskrit names:
Ravi, Bhaskar, Surya, Aditya, Hiranyagarbha, Mitra

raju, do you use these words interchangeably or do you use each in a specific circumstance?

Ravi, Bhaskar, Surya, Aditya, Hiranyagarbha, Mitra

Surya is related to Greek helios, Latin sol, Gothic sauil. (Also from a slightly different root English sun.) Surya is a male god in the Rig Veda (oldest book of hymns written in Vedic Sanskrit) and is part of a triad of gods: Agni 'fire' (cf. Latin ignis) is associated with the earth, Indra is associated with the sky, and Surya with the sun.

Another name for the Sun in the Rigveda is Savitri 'stimulator, rouser, vivifier'. He is less concrete than Surya.

Ravi 'roarer' from the root ru, rauti, raviti 'to howl, roar, yelp, cry aloud'. Related to Latin raucus 'raucus, hoarse, screaming'.

Bhaskara 'shining, glittering, bright'. Literally bhas 'light, ray of light' + kara 'to make'. Cf. Greek phaino 'to shine', Old Irish ban 'white'.

Aditya 'belonging to or coming from Aditi'. Aditi 'boundless, unbroken; free, happy' < a- 'not, un-' + da 'to bind' dyati.

Hiranyagarbha 'golden foetus' actually said of Brahma since he was born of it. Hiranya is related to hari 'blond, golden yellow' and both English yellow (cf. German gelb) and gold. Garbha 'womb, uterus; foetus, embryo'; related Greek delphus 'womb'.

Mitra. Related to the Persian god Mithra who was popular in the Roman Empire and became of a favorite of the soldiers. There's a beautiful Mithraic temple in the basement of a London highrise office building. Also, the Vatican has a splendid collection of Mithraic statues. A title of Mithra was Sol Invictus 'unconquerable sun'. Mitra and Varuna (another Vedic god) are also mentioned in a Hittite manual on horse training which probably predates the Rig Veda's composition.

Many of these names are epithets of Surya the Sun god. Surya is also associated with the divine plant Soma from which was pressed an intoxicating, divine drink (a nectar of the gods). An entire mandala (chapter) of the Rig Veda is composed of Soma hymns. The Zoroastrians had a cognate word, Haoma.

Surya is also used in Indonesian as a literary word for the Sun. The common name for it is matahari -- literally 'the day's eye' -- hence the name of the WW1 wannabe secret agent.

Bingley

These are completely interchangeable. In Indian mythology,
Sun is a god, and gods often have dozens, hundreds, or even
thousands of names. Besides, Sanskrit is very rich in synonyms
- precision synonyms rather - words that mean exactly the same.

>>matahari<<

Why 'wannabe?'

Yup. What with a huge vocabulary, a very active manner of compounding, and an absolute love of synonymy, Sanskrit rules!

Does anyone speak Sanskrit these days, for whatever reasons?

Sure, there's lots of folks in India who can speak it. I seem to remember that there's a college in Benares where all instruction is in Sanskrit. And, of course, it's still used as a liturgical language. Somewhere, I have Hamlet translated into Sanskrit. It was done in the '70s. If you'd like to hear some Sanskrit being chanted there's some MP3s on this site:

http://sarasvati.tripod.com/veda.htm

I guess Sanskrit was NEVER a spoken language. It has always been a literary language. At the times in India when Sanskrit literature was being produced at a prodigious rate, the commoners still spoke languages like Pali, which were phonetically very similar to Sanskrit. It has always been difficult for the common man to pronounce Sanskrit. There's no ban on speaking in Sanskrit though :) News in Sanskrit are still aired on All India Radio! Sanskrit - the language of the Gods, a most rhythmic and mellifluous language.

In Maaori, the Sun is called raa.

Thanks, jheem and raju. I'm aware of Sanskrit's use as a liturgical language, but I guess I was trying to draw a parallel with Latin, which used to be a spoken language and now is pretty much used only as a lingua franca among Catholic clergy. Oh, there is a radio station in Finland (!) that broadcasts the news in Latin.

Ra - the Egyptian Sun God.

Yes, the coincidence had not escaped me either. If properly macronised, the Maaori word looks more like Ra, since it is then spelled with only one "a".

Well, it's true that Classical Sanskrit, at least, is a very artificial language, but probably no more than Classical Latin was. From what I've seen of Pali (and that isn't much), it is a different language than Sanskrit, not just a matter of highfalutin vocab and accent. But I'd always assumed that something very close to Vedic Sasnkrit was spoken at one point. It's just that the embalming process of being a liturgical and literary language took its toll on Classical Sasnkrit (the language of say Kalidasa). But Latin was spoken and used as a medium of communication, both in ancient Rome and in medieval Europe. I'd say that Sanskrit served a similar purpose in Hindu India.

You're welcome, AnnaStrophic. I should remind everybody that my views of Sanskrit are my own and strained through a filter of western secular humanism and linguistics.

a filter

I have come to know and respect that filter, jheem.

Wow!!! There are a lot more names then I could have ever dreamed of. I originally was going to post a reply to each and every person who posted, but with the sheer volume of responses, I felt that I should just do a blanket reply...(but to be honest I am not sure how to do that, so I am doing it this way.)
Anyway, thank you everyone for letting me know that there is such a wide variety of names, and India! Oh-my, that is a lot of names.
I am really learning a lot.
Thank you all.

Rev. Alimae

In reply to:

---

>>matahari<<

Why 'wannabe?'

---

From what I remember reading many years ago, she was probably convicted more as a result of her attempts to build up her image as a woman of mystery who knew everyone and everything on both sides than because of anything she'd actually done.

Bingley

should remind everybody that my views of Sanskrit are my own and strained through a filter of western secular humanism and linguistics.

Kinda sounds as if you should have signed the Kyoto Accord on atmospheric emissions in your own right, jheem!

Thank you very much, eta. Kind words indeed.

deserved, and you're welcome!

In Hawaiian the name for sun is la - with a dash over the a to make it long.
The mountain on Maui is Haleakala
Hale - house; a ka - of the; la - sun
House of the Sun - Haleakala.

>House of the Sun - Haleakala.

Thanks, wow. Haleakala fits the rule I already knew for replacing "l" with "r" to get the Maaori equivalent of a Hawaiian word. The word for house in Maaori is whare. "Wh" is pronounced either as "ph" or as "w", depending on which regional Maaori is being used, and it would be interesting to see if "h" ih Hawaiian equals "wh" in Maaori with the same sort of consistency that "l" equals "r". An interesting coincidence is that in the Far North, the area closest to both Hawaii and Hawaiiki, "wh" is pronounced simply as "h".

What you mean "ph"?

>what do you mean "ph"?

As in fone.

Ah-kay. Jus bean sure you wasn't talkin bout no unvoiced aspirated bilabial plosive.

>Jus bean sure you wasn't talkin bout no unvoiced aspirated bilabial plosive.

Perish the thought!

So is that an unvoiced bilabial fricative or an unvoiced labio-dental fricative?

>is that an unvoiced bilabial fricative or an unvoiced labio-dental fricative?


Yes.

same thing happens in irish to english.. fallan, becomes whalan, --PH changes to WH.. (fallan, is also fallaon, and other various spelling..and whalan has many various spellings. plain P, as in Pidgeon, (as in walter pidgeon) also a translitterated f sound.

The Latin fabulari became the Spanish hablar, as just one example of that f > h transition.

Japanese nihon < nippon.

unvoiced aspirated bilabial plosive.
Sometimes you guys say things that make me consider resurrecting my college English grammar then I say to self "The hell with it." But keep it up - you keep me honest concerning my opinion of my eruditeness.

unvoiced aspirated bilabial plosive.

Usually called a stop these days rather than a plosive, in English anyway.

unvoiced :- sounds made without the vocal cords vibrating. In English, /p, t, k, f, T, s, S/ are voiceless. /b, d, g, v, D, z, Z/ are their voiced counter parts.

aspirated :- produced with a slight puff of air (an aitch). Hold your hand in front of your mouth and say the word 'top'. Feel a little puff of air after the /t/? Now say 'stop'. Where'd it go? The /t/ in 'top' and the /t/ in 'stop' are not the same sound. The former is aspirated and the latter unsapirated.

bilabial :- a stop made with both the lips closed, e.g., /p, b, m/. Different from labio-dental: /f, v/. Known as the place of articulation: bilabial, labio-velar, alveolar, dental, interdental, retroflex, palatal, velar, uvular, pharyngeal, etc.

stop :- stopping the flow of air in the vocal tract. A bilabial stop /p, b/ is made by stopping the air at the lips. Stops: /p, b, t, d, k, g/. Known as the manner of articulation: stops, fricatives, affricates, nasals, etc.

So an unvoiced aspirated bilabial stop would be /pʰ/ (or /ph/ with the h elevated and slightly smaller if your Unicode isn't working).

The difference between bilabial and labio-dental is an interesting one and leads to all sorts of confusion between anglophone and non-anglophone speakers: e.g., the {f} in futon is pronounced /ɸ/ (or a Greek letter phi) by the Japanese, i.e., a voiceless bilabial fricative, but in English it's an different sound altogether /f/ made with the upper lip on top of the lower row of front teeth. Same with Spanish intervocalic {b} and {v}; they are both pronounced as voiced bilabial fricatives, and constantly sound like an English /v/ or /b/.

Hope that helps.

Not only helps but takes me back twenty years to my linguistis course!. A very clear exposition, thank you jheem (apart from a slight confusion between which bit of the mouth is upper and which lower concerning the pronunciation of /f/ - it is lower labial with upper dental, rather than the other way.)

I tried it the way you described and it made me feel disctinctly neanderthal!