Bob!
Coffee Buyer
- Jul 5, 2003
- 11,630
Isn't Farage a rather Arabic sounding name for a leader of a UK Independence Party?
No its a Scottish name
Yes.
According to Gugenheim the origin of the name comes from Arabic Farache, Faradj, Farag, and Faraj, which, depending where the family stayed, took the form of Farachi, Farage, Faraggi, Faragi, Fraggi, Fragi Faragie, Farach, Farash, Faradchi, Faradji and Faraci.
The name Farag is found for the first time in the 9th century in Sicily (merchants). In the 13th century a physician to Charles I king of Anjou, Moses ben Solomon Farag translated from Arabic a medical book. In the Spanish book of Bonnin "Sangre Judia" (Jewish Blood), Barcelona, Flor Del Viento Ediciones (1998) which includes a list of names found at the Santo Officio of the Inquisition, for Jews or new-Christian (15th and 16th centuries) the names Farach and Farache are listed.
Mathilde Tagger who provided the above information wrote
"This information of Farach and/or Farache in Spanish archives shows that the Spanish Farache, pronounced there as Faratshay (?' is used for the transliteration of CH=TSH and DJ, the final E is transliterated in Hebrew by the letter Yod. From A. Laredo, "Les noms de Juifs du Maroc", Madrid 1978), and the name Faraggi as Faradji.