بردي

Where it comes from

Together with Latin buda (“cattail”) declared a Berber borrowing; though a connection to Old Armenian պրտու (prtu, “paper reed”) complicates this; maybe both the Armenian and Arabic have been mediated by Aramaic, considering that the particular meaning of paper reed is distributed right in the historical Aramaic language area, and that Persian بوری (buri), بوریه (buriya), بوریه (buriye, “split reed, marsh reed; reed mat”) is expected from a source word ending -ītā in the emphatic state. Vollers lists the Arabic term under the “secure borrowings from Egyptian”, perhaps thinking about a semantic interference of Coptic ⲃⲱ (bō, “bush”) from Demotic Egyptian b (/⁠*βoːʔ⁠/, “bush”) from Egyptian bꜣt (/⁠*ˈbaːʀat⁠/, “bush, especially paper reed”); in Corriente’s last dictionary instead ⲡⲓ-ⲣⲱⲧⲓ ~ ⲣⲟϯ (pi-rōti ~ roti, “overgrowths”) is suggested. But forms فَافِير (fāfīr), فَفِير (fafīr), بَابِير (bābīr), بَبِير (babīr) employed for paper reed are secure borrowings from Ancient Greek πάπυρος (pápuros).