Re: Lama and Yama

On 9/13/2024 11:51 PM, Aidan Kehoe wrote:

  Ar an triú lá déag de mí Méan Fómhair, scríobh Jeff Barnett:

  > Question from a non-linguist:
  >
  > My pleasure reading of Oriental fiction and myth seem to frequently run into
  > the words "Lama" and "Yama". The first usually refers to a holy man and the
  > second to a God. Of course the words sound fairly similar to my ear. So I am
  > curious: Are they were derived from a common origin?

Wikipedia documents the first as Tibetan, with “guru” being the appropriate
Sanskrit term, the second is itself Sanskrit. Tibetan is a Sino-Tibetan
language, Sanskrit is Indo-European. With them coming from distinct language
families, absent other evidence the way to bet is that they are not derived
from a common origin.

  > I briefly poked around the internet and found nothing that was based on
  > anything other than it sounded cute to say "Lama Yama" or "Yama Lama" three
  > times quickly. Since I really don't know how to find the right hole to force a
  > search engine into, I thought I'd try you all.

Thanks for the reply.I looked at the Wiki articles before posting and
found the same lack of origin story. Also, HenHanna in another reply add
some info that also expressed a non-related origin story.
--
Jeff Barnett