Peleg in Hebrew, means "Division," but in Greek it means "Sea." We get our present English word archipelago from this: archi-pelagos, the first sea. The Greeks called the Aegean Sea "The Archipelago," the first sea, drawing the name from this man, Peleg.
There is an Italian specialist of the Middle-East who links the name Belgae (on both sides of the Channel) to Akkadian palag which he also links to Hebrew peleg. But he describes peleg as referring to water, a river, a waterway.
IS that interpretation of "peleg" possible? https://biblearchaeology.org/research/flood-of-noah/2798-revisiting-the-peleg-event
Response last updated by CmdrK on Jul 31 2021.
Dec 14 2008, 4:21 PM
Perhaps Belgae stems from off an ancient Usko-mediterraan word, related with the Sumerische palgu, the Akkadische palag, and the Hebrew peleg, 'current', 'water.' It would mean so: People that near the water (or the sea) live.
That's indeed what Semerano suggests. In the same way he gives a new explanation for the name Catalonia, which he links with Usko-Mediterranean "substratelanguages". He combines Hebrew gadal with a suffix onia. Gadal: highlands.
Bibliography: Semerano, Giovanni. Le origini della cultura Europea: Rivelazioni della linguistica storica. Three volumes. Published in Florende. First volume in 1984 and two other volumes in 1994. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Giovanni_Semerano
The word "Peleg" has a number of uses, usually referring to division. (The name of Eber's son in the 10th chapter of Genesis is meant in that context.) However, in some cases it could be referring to water currents - "palgei mayim" in Hebrew (as in Psalms 1:3 - "he would be as a tree planted on currents of water which bares its fruit in time..."). The meaning there, though , refers more to the shalows, the brooks and life-supporting lakes rather than to salty seas. Though, you never know, the Greeks might have shared the word for larger bodies of water.
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