Bengali: Howrah হাওড়া

Hemza

Hemza

Senior Member
Paris, France
French, Mor/Hijz Arabic (heritage)
Hello everyone,

What does Howrah/হাওড়া means? I guess it's Bengali but I'm not sure. It's the name of a train station in Kolkata.

Thank you
 
    • Hello Hemza,

    The word Howrah is the premier railway station in Kolkata. Yes it is in Bengali. There is no meaning, as far as I know as such.
     
    Hello Shounak,

    Thanks for your reply. I thought it might have a meaning because in Arabic, this word exists (حوراء) and it's the white part of the eye (it is also a name).
     
    I checked Sukumar Sen's "বাংলা স্থাননাম" (Bengali Toponym). He also has no useful information. Like many other place-names in Bengal, haoRa/হাওড়া (Anglicized: Howrah) is quite opaque.

    It is unlikely to be of Arabic provenance. حوراء would have most likely gotten bengalized as "*houra/হৌরা", i.e. with a different diphthong and a trilled "r" (as opposed to the tapped "r" that Howrah actually contains), if it was ever used.
     
    Thank you for your help :). My point wasn't to give it an Arabic origin, it's just that the term made me think of it. Also, the Arabic word does contain a diphtong, it's pronunced "hawra" (not the English "h"). But I admit I have no idea how it is pronounced in Bengali.

    So you think the name has been given randomly to the station, the bridge and the city? I thought it could be the name of a character or it being linked to the area's history or something like this.

    Edit: I just checked the Arabic version of wikipedia about the city and you're right, it's not the same word at all. In Arabic, it's written هاورا and the "h" here is the same as the English one so it's different from حوراء
     
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    There certainly exist Arabic-origin placenames in Bengal in general and even in the same general region as Howrah, e.g. on the Eastern edge of Kolkata/Calcutta, there is kɔsba/কসবা (Anglicised: Kasba), which, I believe, comes from Arabic قصبة through Persian. I simply don't believe Howrah is one of those.
     
    Hemza said:
    I thought it might have a meaning because in Arabic, this word exists (حوراء) and it's the white part of the eye (it is also a name).
    Click to expand...
    If it had originated from حوراء, it would have been হাওরা with a র instead of a ড় . ড় is never used to write R in foreign words.
     
    Dib said:
    I checked Sukumar Sen's "বাংলা স্থাননাম" (Bengali Toponym). He also has no useful information. Like many other place-names in Bengal, haoRa/হাওড়া (Anglicized: Howrah) is quite opaque.
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    Urdu Lughat

    Just a thought, although in Urdu the pronunciation is "hoRaa" (a small boat with both ends being identical)
     
    • Thank you!
    Reactions: Dib
    Qureshpor said:
    Urdu Lughat

    Just a thought, although in Urdu the pronunciation is "hoRaa" (a small boat with both ends being identical)
    Click to expand...
    Thank you for the parallel. While I agree with rehanelbengali that it is unlikely to be directly from the Urdu word, the semantics is intriguing. It would make sense to check in older Bengali sources if there was a word like 'haoRa' (presumably cognate to Urdu hoRaa) which, maybe, signified some sort of merchant boats, and check if they had any special connection to this place - which would not be surprising because there were riverine market places on the opposite bank of the Hoogley where now stands Kolkata.

    The only similar-sounding and similar-meaning Bengali word that comes to my mind is bhôR ভড় which was a kind of riverine merchant cargo vessel. The h~bh alternation at the beginning of a word is not regular, but with some attestation in new Indo-Aryan languages. The most well-known is probably the be-verb 'ho-' with forms in 'bh-' in some Eastern Hindi/Bihari lects (bhail = hu'aa = holo = happened) ultimately from Sanskrit bhav- (to be, become). But there are also possible examples in Bengali like bha~R ভাঁড় (small earthen pot, Hindi kulhaR) vs. ha~Ri হাঁড়ি (big cooking pot).

    So, the haoRa-bhôR-hoRaa connection, while not super-convincing on the surface, has the potential to yield something if properly investigated.
     
    Could this word be its origins?

    হাওড় hāoṛa n. an extensive marsh or quagmire or fen.
     
    • Thank you!
    Reactions: Dib
    Qureshpor said:
    Could this word be its origins?

    হাওড় hāoṛa n. an extensive marsh or quagmire or fen.
    Click to expand...

    Thank you! This is certainly a much better phonetic match, and the semantics is probably good too, as there were marshlands all around that region. Still, there are a couple of issues with it:

    1) I am not sure this word was ever used in South-West Bengal. I only know it as the name for shallow marshy lakes in Sylhet, like 400 Km away from Howrah.

    2) If it was indeed used in SW Bengal, what was (or, maybe even 'is'?) its exact form? I have only ever known it as হাওর (i.e. with a final /r/) in the Sylhet context, but since the r-R phonetic distinction has been dead in Bangladesh for a while, that is not necessarily a deal-breaker for this proposal. In fact, the dictionaries seem to be split on the issue: Samsad has ড়/R, Haricharan and Bangladesh Bangla Academy's evolutionary dictionary (বিবর্তনমূলক বাংলা অভিধান; BBA) have র/r (Haricharan marks it as relating to Sylhet), and Sukumar Sen's "Etymological Dictionary of Bengali: c. 1000-1800" have both (with a quotation containing /r/ from Harivamsha by the 17th c. poet Bhavananda - also likely from Sylhet, as far as I could ascertain). Sen and BBA both give the etymon as Sanskrit সাগর/saagara. If the etymology is correct (and it's a big 'if'), then the initial /h/ is possible only in the far Eastern Bengal, e.g. Sylhet, not around Howrah, where the actual form of this etymon is সায়র/sayôr. So, that brings us back to problem (1) - was this word ever used at the right place?
     
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