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Help[Facts] Re: Nataniel
in reply to a message by Tieliebirds
Yes, Nataniel is a variant spelling of Nathaniel. Whether it is used in Spain I don't know. The Italian form is NATANAELE. In Germany there is NATHANAEL (fairly rare), NATHANIEL (even rarer) and NATANIEL (almost non-exsistant).
Now the TH here represents the Hebrew letter TAW, whereas the Hebrew letter THET (or TETH? I have no idea how you guys spell the letters of the Hebrew alphabet) usually appears as a plain T. There is a tendency in Germany (and other parts of Europe I believe) to drop the H in biblical names as far as modern bible editions are concerned. So you will read about David and Goliat instead of Goliath. This has not really influenced given names in Germany as far as I can see.
A TH in a name may have other reasons though: With names like Natalie you may find the spelling with a TH (Nathalie) which is originally French. But I have no idea why the French spell the name this way. It is of Latin origin and there is only one T-sound in Latin and TH is only found in Greek loan words.
Now Greek again has two Ts like Hebrew (they took their alphabet from some other Semitic language, probably Phoenician; the funny thing is, in Greek it's the first T in the Alphabet that we reproduce as TH).
Take ANTHONY: The etymology of the Name is doubtful, it may be Latin or pre-Latin, maybe Greek (but if it is Greek, it has the second T in it, the non-TH one). It wasn't until the Renaissance that scholars started spelling the name ANTHONY. They did so because they thought it had something to do with the Greek vocabulary word "anthos" (meaning "flower"), which is pretty, but not true.
I hope this doesn't lead to even more confusion ;–)
Andy
Now the TH here represents the Hebrew letter TAW, whereas the Hebrew letter THET (or TETH? I have no idea how you guys spell the letters of the Hebrew alphabet) usually appears as a plain T. There is a tendency in Germany (and other parts of Europe I believe) to drop the H in biblical names as far as modern bible editions are concerned. So you will read about David and Goliat instead of Goliath. This has not really influenced given names in Germany as far as I can see.
A TH in a name may have other reasons though: With names like Natalie you may find the spelling with a TH (Nathalie) which is originally French. But I have no idea why the French spell the name this way. It is of Latin origin and there is only one T-sound in Latin and TH is only found in Greek loan words.
Now Greek again has two Ts like Hebrew (they took their alphabet from some other Semitic language, probably Phoenician; the funny thing is, in Greek it's the first T in the Alphabet that we reproduce as TH).
Take ANTHONY: The etymology of the Name is doubtful, it may be Latin or pre-Latin, maybe Greek (but if it is Greek, it has the second T in it, the non-TH one). It wasn't until the Renaissance that scholars started spelling the name ANTHONY. They did so because they thought it had something to do with the Greek vocabulary word "anthos" (meaning "flower"), which is pretty, but not true.
I hope this doesn't lead to even more confusion ;–)
Andy
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