For the past few decades, Amazon has been one of the most recognized brand names worldwide. The founder chose the name because of the exotic nature and great size of the Amazon river. The river got its name from the women fighters of the native tribe who attacked the Spanish explorers, who reminded them of the Greek myth of the Amazons - a group of female warriors.
And where did the Greeks get the name Amazon? The Online Etymology Dictionary has this entry:
late 14c., via Old French (13c.) or Latin, from Greek Amazon (mostly in plural Amazones) "one of a race of female warriors in Scythia," probably from an unknown non-Indo-European word, or possibly from an Iranian compound *ha-maz-an- "(one) fighting together" [Watkins], but in folk etymology long derived from a- "without" + mazos, variant of mastos "breast;" hence the story that the Amazons cut or burned off one breast so they could draw bowstrings more efficiently.
What was the non-Indo-European word? There are many theories, but I'd like to focus on Klein's suggestion in his CEDEL:
from Greek Amazon, which probably derives from Hebrew ammitz, 'strong'
Amitz אמיץ, derives from the root אמץ, meaning "to be strong." A synonym of the more popular chazak חזק (the verb חזק appears 290 times in the Bible, while אמץ only appears 41 times), it is the source of several words relating to strength:
- ometz אומץ - "bravery"
- ma'amatz מאמץ - "effort"
- hitametz התאמץ - "went to great lengths, endeavored"
But one meaning of the root does not seem to fit with the others: imetz אימץ - "adopted" and imutz אימוץ - "adoption." How did those uses come from a root meaning "be strong"?
Klein lists the meaning "was adopted (said of a child)" but does not explain the development. After going through meanings related to strength, Ben Yehuda adds:
"Some writers would say that someone imetz (adopted) to him a son or daughter." However, he does not indicate when this usage began, or give any examples of its usage.
There is one biblical verse, however, that some point to as an example of אמץ meaning "to adopt." This is Tehillim 80:16
וְכַנָּה אֲשֶׁר־נָטְעָה יְמִינֶךָ וְעַל־בֵּן אִמַּצְתָּה לָּךְ׃
This is a difficult verse to understand, and there are many translations. The JPS, for example translates this verse (and the preceding one, which I've added for context as):
"O God of hosts, turn again,
look down from heaven and see;take note of that vine, the stock planted by Your right hand,
the stem [ben] you have taken [imatzta] as Your own."
A footnote to their translation, on the word "stem," notes: "literarly 'son.'" So according to this translation, the literal meaning of the phrase would be "the son you have taken as Your own," which could imply something like adoption.
Robert Alter, in his translation, goes for that literal meaning, translating it as "the son You took to Yourself", and adds this note:
If the received text shows an authentic reading here, there is a slightly disconcerting shift from the vehicle of the metaphor (the vine) to its tenor (the people of Israel as God’s son). Some interpreters have understood ben as a poetic term for “branch” or as a scribal error for some other word that means “branch,” but the verb attached to it - ʾimatsta, which suggests adoption of a child—is appropriate for a son, not a plant.
It seems to me that Alter is perhaps putting the cart before the horse. Both verses 15 and 16 are clearly using imagery of plants. If there were other verses where imetz meant "to adopt", then they could be used to justify that translation here. But I haven't found any, and I suspect Alter is influenced by modern usage.
In fact, Ben Yehuda does quote this verse, in his entry for אמץ, under the meaning "to plant." He adds another verse, Yeshaya 44:14 -
לִכְרׇת־לוֹ אֲרָזִים וַיִּקַּח תִּרְזָה וְאַלּוֹן וַיְאַמֶּץ־לוֹ בַּעֲצֵי־יָעַר נָטַע אֹרֶן וְגֶשֶׁם יְגַדֵּל׃
By including it under the subentry, Ben Yehuda is implying that it means "to plant" here as well. What is the connection between "planting" and "strength"? That can be found in a number of translations to these two verses. For example the (old) Koren Jerusalem Bible translates the verse from Yeshaya as:
He hews him down cedars, and takes the pine and the oak, which he strengthens for himself [vay'ametz] among the trees of the forest: he plants a forest tree and the rain nourishes it.
Part of the planting process, or a result of is, the strengthening of the tree. The new Koren Tanakh, in their translation of the Tehillim verse, uses similar language: "this shoot You nurtured as Your own." Kaddari, quoting these verses (and Tehillim 80:18) says it means גידלת, which can mean "to raise" or "to grow" (which also could imply adoption.)
Others, however, stick to a meaning related to "taking." The JPS translates the Yeshaya phrase as "He sets aside trees of the forest" and Alter suggests "he picks from the trees of the forest." How is choosing or taking related to strength? The BDB offers the meaning "assure, secure for oneself." Secure implies both strength and possession.
Ultimately, the meaning of the verb אמץ is unclear in these verses (and the Daat Mikra, for example on Yeshaya 44:14, offers both "to strengthen" and "to set aside.") But one thing is clear - these verses weren't followed up with uses of אמץ to mean the adoption of a child in the remainder of Biblical literature, or any of Talmudic literature. In fact, a search of the Historical Dictionary Project of the Academy of the Hebrew Language shows the first clear example of that usage in an 1873 essay (page 143 and page 144) by the writer Peretz Smolenskin. And even following that, it wasn't a very popular usage. For example, see the results of this Google Books Ngram Viewer search. I looked for the word אימוץ, which as a gerund wouldn't be used for much else other than adoption. It only really picks up in the 1950s, growing to a much higher usage in the last twenty years.
So what happened here? I think this is an example of a phenomenon we've discussed many times before on Balashon. I don't know the technical name of the linguistic phenomenon (but I have a feeling a reader will enlighten me in the comments), but what happens frequently in Hebrew when there are two synonyms is that one will become the popular one for common usage and the other will take on a different meaning. This new meaning will generally fill in a semantic gap, becoming the word for a concept previously without a good word as a fit. (This is part of the process called semantic change, but I don't think it's exactly semantic narrowing, since the new meaning isn't necessarily less general than the earlier meaning - just different.) We saw it with etz and ilan, with atar and makom, with tzedek and tzedaka, and now with chizek and imetz. Hebrew today doesn't really need two words for "strengthen." So when a writer like Smolenskin borrows from a verse in Tehillim and turns imetz into adopt (a child), then the speakers will, well, adopt the usage with open arms. (Yes, the meaning of imetz has since expanded to mean adopting of any practice or idea.)
Perhaps the lesson here is just as Amazon the company takes over marketplaces, and the waters of the Amazon river flow through the land of South America, so too will words like imutz fill in the linguistic gaps if only given a chance.
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