Here is an interesting part of French wikipedia:
https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sumer
| La terminologie employée par les historiens reprend en partie des termes rencontrés dans les textes antiques18,19. | The terminology used by historians is partially taken over from terms found in ancient texts. | |
| Sumer est issu du terme akkadien Šumerum, correspondant au sumérien ki-engi (« pays autochtone » ?), qui désignait une région couvrant la partie sud de la Mésopotamie, souvent en opposition à la région qui la bordait au nord, le pays d'Akkad, Akkadum en akkadien et ki-uri en sumérien, peuplé majoritairement de Sémites, les « Akkadiens », locuteurs de l'akkadien. | Sumer comes from the Akkadian term Šumerum, which corresponds to the Sumerian ki-engi ("own land"?) which designated a region covering the South part of Mesopotamia, often in opposite to a region bordering it on the North, the land of Akkad, Akkadum in Akkadian and ki-uri in Sumerian, peopled in majority by Semites, the "Akkadians" who spoke Akkadian. | |
| On trouvait du reste plus couramment le terme de « Pays », kalam, pour désigner ces contrées. | One found more commonly the term "land" - kalam - to designate these regions. | |
| La langue sumérienne était également évoquée dans les textes, eme-gi7 (quelque chose comme « langue autochtone ») en sumérien, et šumeru en akkadien des phases babyloniennes tardives20. | The Sumerian tongue was also evoked in the texts, eme-gi7 (something like "own language") in Sumerian, and šumeru in the Akkadian of the late Babylonian phases. | |
| Les historiens ont ensuite créé le terme « Sumériens » pour qualifier le peuple vivant dans cette région et parlant cette langue. | Historians have afterwards created the term "Sumerians" to qualify the people living in this region and speaking this language. |
I think this is pretty definite against anyone pretending that Sennaar has to mean only South Mesopotamia in the Bible.
In German, "Alemannen" means a specific tribe among those making up German speakers, and in French "Allemands" means Germans.
Akkadian and Hebrew are not the same language, so Sennaar and Šumerum need not have the same delimitation. Both Akkadian and Sumerian were obviously post-Babel languages, since different. The restriction of Šumerum to the South can have very clear roots in that fact.
Before the Babel event, it was more natural to designate countries by natural features, and the ones most prominent would be:
- the plain
- the two rivers.
But it is not the plain as plain, since we find "a plain in the land of Sennaar" - therefore it is the two rivers. Which are identic up to North Syria and East Turkey.
This is obviously lost on people who insist Genesis 11 was redacted during the Babylonian captivity (which is as intelligent as saying "Apollonius of Rhodes wrote the Iliad and Odyssey"), and therefore when the ethnic meaning of Šumerum was already established. But they are anyway lost ... don't stray with them, please!/HGL
