ثيتل

它从哪里来

Of the unique root ث ت ل (ṯ t l), natively possibly a variant of ف ت ل (f t l) meaning “to be twisted”, “to be branch-like”; in reference to the horn variation reported of the original breed identified with this term, "a mountain وَعْل (waʕl) with shorter branching horns", later applied to other similar animals.

However strikingly similar to Ge'ez ወይጠል (wäyṭäl), Tigrinya ወይጠል (wäyṭäl), Tigre ቴተል (tetäl), ጦተል (ṭotäl), also used to refer to some wild goat or antelope in each case and understood as native derivatives or blends of Ge'ez ጠሊ (ṭäli, “kid, goat-child”) with ወዓላ (wäʿala, “mountain goat”), equalling Arabic وَعِل (waʕil, “wild goat; antelope”) commixed into Arabic طَلًا (ṭalan, “young of a deer or gazelle”).

Minding the distribution of either the Nubian ibex and the hartebeest, the Arabic term may have started as an exotism borrowed anciently from a Ge'ez form *ጠይተል (*ṭäytäl) via the mediation of Cushitic spoken by the Blemmyes north of the Aksumites, for the Beja language now spoken there has instead of emphatics the peculiar phoneme /ʈ/, the voiceless retroflex plosive, which to an Arabic speaker sounds like the voiceless dental fricative /θ/. Even ancient Arabic toponyms referring to places in Ethiopian Semitic-speaking areas have been shown to have been acquired from Beja, as the name of Massawa, بَاضِع (bāḍiʕ).