July 12, 2003

Peace paas

Is there a linguistic connection between "peace" and the Persian word "paas", as in PAAS-E-BAAN (policeman), PAAS-GAAH (police station), PAAS-DAAR (guard), etc? What do you think?

Houman Younessi replies: Whilst establishing that two words ARE linguistically related is often a relatively easy matter, It is often very difficult to establish the converse: that two words from the same linguistic family are NOT related. Persian is related to English as they both are Indo-European languages and between them there are many words that are linguistically connected. However the two words in question are probably not from the same root. PAAS in Persian has two meanings; one means gratitude and/or to give thanks (as in SEPAAS), the other means to guard (PAASBAN, PAASDAR). The word PEACE comes from the Latin PAX which means exactly the same thing (Peace) (e.g. Pax Romani; Roman Peace) and as far as I have managed to infer, has nothing to do with the word PAAS.

Another point of view from Anna Demetriades: I believe PAAS is from the Avestan root PAA. The root for peace, pax, etc is a different though similar root. See link for more details.

Winner: Houman Younessi. Sad Afarin!

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