In Heritage No. 98, published recently, on page 1953, I came across the following paragraph regarding the etymology of the word ‘vajrinġa’, the name of a street in Victoria, Gozo. To tell the truth, I never expected to find such fantastic ideas about the derivation of this word – with which I have to say I totally disagree.

For the benefit of your readers, I reproduce the paragraph in toto to avoid any misunderstanding.

“If analysed the term ‘Il-Vajrinġa’ will be found to be made of two nouns in the construct state: ‘vajr’ and ‘inġa’. The word ‘vajr’ is, in Gozitan dialect, a corruption of the Semitic term ‘barr’ meaning ‘countryside’ pronounced ‘bajr’, thus, ‘vajr’ when the ‘b’ changes into ‘v’. ‘Inġa’ is ‘l-imġar’, pronounced also in Gozitan dialect becomes ‘inġa’, meaning ‘water-way or stream’ (from the Arabic ġir). The word ‘l-imġar’, pronounced also in Gozitan dialect becomes ‘inġa’ dropping both the initial article ‘l-’ and the final letter ‘r’, and interchanging the initial letters from ‘m’ to ‘n’. Thus ‘bajrlimġar’, pronounced in Gozitan dialect, becomes ‘vajrinġa’, which is a corruption of ‘barr l-imġar’, meaning ‘the countryside of the stream’.”

Now for my comments. In Gozitan dialect, the word ‘barr’ is ‘borr’ and, as far as I know, ‘barr’ never becomes ‘bajr’, or ‘vajr’ for that matter. In his derivation, the author does not explain by what phonetic laws the word ‘barr’ undergoes two changes and for what reason.

With regard to ‘inġa’, his explanations are more horrendous. The author derives ‘inġa’ from ‘l-imġar’. He says that this process entails (i) the elimination of the article, (ii) the dropping out of the final ‘r’, and (iii) the shifting of the stress from the vowel ‘a’ to the vowel ‘i’. Phonetically, this is utterly impossible. The vowel ‘a’ of ‘l-imġar’ is a long vowel, and bears the stress, while the vowel ‘i’ is a euphonic vowel and bears no stress. According to Maltese linguistics, the euphonic vowel can never bear the stress.

The author states that the word ‘vajrinġa’ is derived from a phrase in the construct state. Phrases in the construct state can never drop the article, otherwise their meaning is changed from definite to indefinite. Nor can they be preceded by an article. So vajrinġa cannot have its origin from a phrase in the construct state. So much so that “vajrinġa” is a feminine noun, and not masculine!

The derivation of the word ‘l-imġar’ from the Arabic ‘ġir’, meaning a stream, is something I never managed to corroborate with Arabic dictionaries. So the author should have given the root of the word ‘ġir’ for us to check the derivation. I doubt whether he will ever succeed in proving his point.

The derivation process has not been concluded yet. As if all the aforementioned processes were not enough, the author then tells us that the ‘m’ has also changed to ‘n’. Now this is impossible, as the consonant ‘m’ of ‘l-imġar’ is the letter ‘m’ of mimated nouns that cannot be changed so easily. So you can see that this is why I said that this type of etymology is simple fantastic and unheard of.

Now let me give my own version regarding the etymology of the word ‘vajrinġa’. To begin with, in my opinion it is derived from two Italian or Sicilian words: ‘via’, meaning a road or a street, and ‘arancia’, an orange. In the word ‘via’, emphasis falls on the vowel ‘i’, and in the word ‘arancia’ the stress falls on the second vowel ‘a’. Putting these two words side by side, we have the phrase ‘via arancia’. Now one of the two vowels ‘a’ has to be elided, so we have ‘vi arancia’. Moreover, we all know that ‘arancia’ in Maltese has become ‘arinġa’ and with an agglutinated article it became ‘larinġa’ (for l-arinġa). So ‘vi arancia’ became ‘vi arinġa’. Notice how the stress remained on the second vowel of ‘arinġa’.

Now we have to prove how the ‘vi’ became ‘vaj’. This can be done simply by finding a similar example to demonstrate that this is also another linguistic process.

A word that has undergone the same processes is ‘vicuna’ (a type of cloth). In Maltese this word has become ‘vajguna’ (you can refer to Aquilina’s Maltese-English Dictionary). So, in a similar way ‘vi arinġa’ has become ‘vajrinġa’ (for vajarinġa), Orange Road. This is, in my opinion, the true etymology of the word vajrinġa. If any Maltese

grammarian or linguist has a better derivation, let him come forward with his suggestion.

Anton F. Attard

VICTORIA