I was recently asked if there is a connection between the English word "cameo" and the Hebrew word קמיע kamea - "amulet."
If that seems like a strange suggestion, perhaps you aren't familiar with the background of "cameo." While today it usually means "a small theatrical role usually performed by a well-known actor and often limited to a single scene," that's not the original sense. (Modern Hebrew also has hofa'at kamea הופעת קמע meaning a "cameo appearance, but that is a much more recent usage.) The original sense can be found in this entry from the Online Etymology Dictionary:
early 15c., kaadmaheu, camew, chamehieux and many other spellings (from early 13c. in Anglo-Latin), "engraving in relief upon a precious stone with two layers of colors" (such as onyx, agate, or shell) and done so as to utilize the effect of the colors, from Old French camaieu and directly from Medieval Latin cammaeus, which is of unknown origin, perhaps ultimately from Arabic qamaa'il "flower buds," or Persian chumahan "agate."
In 19c. also used of other raised, carved work on a miniature scale. Transferred sense of "small character or part that stands out from other minor parts" in a play, etc., is from 1928, from earlier meaning "short literary sketch or portrait" (1851), a transferred sense from cameo silhouettes. A cameotype (1864) was a small, vignette daguerreotype mounted in a jeweled setting.
Since cameo originally meant a type of jewelry, that's much closer to the sense of "amulet." Yet, none of the suggestions mentioned in this entry can be connected to kamea. (I haven't been able to find any Hebrew cognate to the qamaa'il referenced above. In fact, the claims is disputed entirely in this article, saying that qamaa'il is not found in Arabic dictionaries.)
However, that doesn't mean a connection isn't possible. Let's first look at the origin of kamea, to see if it can bring us closer to cameo. (Ben Yehuda points out that the original pronunciation was kamia, but the transition to kamea may have been from the Italian "cameo.") Here's Klein's entry:
קָמֵֽיעַ m.n. PBH (pl. קְמֵיעִים, also קֽמֵיעוֹת) amulet. [Related to Aram. קֽמֵיעָא, Syr. קֽמִיעָא, Mand. קמאהא (= amulet), Arab. qama‘a (= he tamed, curbed, bridled).]
קְמֵיעָה f.n. MH amulet. [A secondary form of קָמֵיעַ.]
And while he doesn't directly link the two, a connection between kamea and the root קמע is likely. He had said that kamea is related to an Arabic root meaning "tamed" or "bridled", and here is his entry for קמע:
קמע to bind, tie up.
Related to Aram. קְמַע (= he bound, tied up).
To bridle is to tie up a horse with reins, so I can see a connection between kamea - "bridled" and קמע - "to tie up." An amulet, as jewelry, is also "tied up" to the wearer, so all of these meanings appear to be related. (Kohut, in the Aruch HaShalem, entry קמע, points out that just as the Greek word for amulet, periamma, comes from amma, "knot", so too does kamea come from קמע, "to tie.")
He then goes on to say that kim'ah קמעה - "a little" may also derive from the same root:
קִמְעָה, קִמְעָא adv. PBH a little. [Aram. קִמְעָא; according to some scholars prob. related to Arab. qamā‘, qamā‘a (= smallness, littleness). It is more probable, however, that it derives from the v. קמע, equivalent of Heb. קמץ (= he took a handful). See קמץ ᴵ.]
(We discussed the Hebrew equivalent קמץ kamatz in this earlier post.)
Kim'ah is the root of the modern Hebrew word kim'oni קמעוני - "retail", just as the English word retail originally meant "to sell in small quantities."
All this is nice, and would seem to point us in the direction of a connection between kamea and cameo, but as we've seen many times here before, words that appear to be connected do not necessarily share a common origin. There are sources out there that say the two are directly connected, but do not offer any proof.
However, I did find one, admittedly older, theory that ties the two words together. There was a claim, mentioned in early editions of the Encyclopedia Britannica, that cameo derives from the Arabic kamea, "amulet", which would clearly be cognate with the Hebrew. For example, this is in the entry from the 1902 edition:
The word cameo is generally regarded as being derived from the Arabic camea, a charm or amulet
But as this article points out, the word camea was not found "with this significance in the Arabic dictionaries" and "in all probability, the writer of the Encyclopedia Britannica thought of the Aramaic camea." It also notes that later editions of the encyclopedia dropped that etymology.
That's certainly possible. I did find a number of mentions from 19th century books that also mentioned an Arabic form of camea, but it's possible they were all mistaken separately or influenced from one source that mixed up the Aramaic and Arabic.
But that doesn't make me think that an etymology is unlikely. We've seen relevant cognates in a few Semitic languages, and all the meanings seem related to the same sense of "amulet." If a more convincing etymology for cameo is found, then we can perhaps drop the connection to kamea. But for now, it still seems like a reasonable proposition.
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