Etymology This etymological discussion is simply wrong in so many ways The Greek name tigris comes from the Old Persian word for tiger and means the fast one It might also be argued to come from Kurdish too In Kurdish Tir means arrow This means that the river is quick and fast like an arrow T j T j means sharp pointing and cutting Since the letter j doesn t exist in Greek T j T j became Tig later Tigr In Greek at the end of words is sonex is used T j Tijr Tig Tigr Tigris First of all the Persian for tiger is babr not tigr or anything like it The Greek word tigris meaning tiger may be related to Persian words within the same family as tigr but that is not the Persian meaning of the words Second the Kurdish and Farsi word for arrow tir comes from Middle Persian tigr which also means arrow Third the word tij or rather tiz sharp is certainly related to tigr but they belong to the same word family they are not the same word I ll try to come up with something better