Talk:Name of Syria

message: This article seems to me, after reading through it, to be a little bit of unbalanced. For example, Syrians was also applied for the Arameans. The TriZ (talk) 11:49, 16 October 2008 (UTC)
thread_title: Unbalanced

message: ArameanSyriac, stop introducing your personal opinion with stuff like "The name is often incorrectly connected to ". The article makes perfectly clear that the two names likely have the same etymology. Keep going and you're just headed for another block. We are still waiting for you to make your first constructive contribution. --dab (𒁳) 12:09, 9 January 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: The whole music, sports, history, language, culture, traditions etc sections in the article Syriac people was written by me. Also, there was no history about the western Assyrian/Syriac people, and i wrote a whole section about that. AramaeanSyriac (talk) 14:58, 9 January 2009 (UTC)
thread_title: Edit war

message: The first century B.C. Strabo attests to the fact that Syria meant Assyria. He writes:" When those who have written histories about  the Syrian empire say that the Medes were overthrown by the Persians and the Syrians by the Medes, they mean by the Syrian no other people than those who built the royal palaces in Babylon and Ninus; and of these Syrians, Ninus was the man who founded Ninus [Nineveh], in Aturia..[Assyria]. (H.L. Jones Translation of "Geography of Strabo", New York 1916, Vol. VIII p.195) 
The third century Roman historian Justinus also attests to this fact. He wrote: "The  Assyrians, who were afterwards called Syrians, held their empire for thirteen hundred years." (Marcus Junianus Justinus Epitome of the Philippic, "History of Pompeius Trogus", translated by Rev. John Selby Watson. (London: Henry G. Bohn, 1853)Ninevite (talk) 20:02, 26 January 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: So? Your looking for quotations, then here you go . The TriZ (talk) 19:50, 27 January 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  Strabo and Justinus on Etymology 

message: Parts of this article seems when I look at it to be written with a personal point of view.
For example,
"Herodotus used it loosely to refer to Cappadocia (Pipes 1992).[1] In Greek usage, Syria and Assyria were used almost interchangeably, but in the Roman Empire, Syria and Assyria came to be used as distinct geographical terms."
Researches shows that Herodotus consistently distinguished the names Syria and Assyria, how can it then be said that in Greek usage, Syria and Assyria were used almost interchangeably? (See  pp. 21.)
Furthermore,
"Etymologically, the name is often connected to Ασσυρία, Assuria, from the Akkadian Aššur. Theodor Nöldeke in 1881 was the first to give philological support to the assumption that Syria and Assyria have the same etymology,[2] a suggestion going back to John Selden (1617)."
Often? That's a very subjectively word to use in this context. About the support from Nöldeke, the source used tells nothing about Nöldekes supposedly support.
The article continues by saying,
"Current academic opinion favours the connection."
Indeed a very much POV statement. The entire article seems to be written and arranged in a way to favour the writers own personal view of this matter.
"Assyriologist Simo Parpola connects the etymological question to the ethnic identity of the present-day Aramaic-speaking peoples:
Since omission of initial vowels is not a feature of Aramaic phonology, the lack of the initial A- in Sūrāyā/Sūr(y)ōyō cannot be due to internal Aramaic development but must go back directly to Neo-Assyrian. The phonology of Sūrāyā (Sūrōyō) thus implies that this term, which is crucial to the identity of the present-day Aramaic-speaking peoples, entered the Aramaic language in the seventh century BC, when the Arameans already were a fully integrated part of the Assyrian nation. In contrast to the word Āθūr, which was borrowed into Aramaic when Assyria still was an alien society, it cannot be regarded as a loanword but as an indigenous selfdesignation, which the Aramaic-speaking Assyrians shared with their Akkadian-speaking fellow citizens.[6]
The question has a certain importance in the Assyrian naming dispute.[7]"
The hypothesis of the lost a in the begining of the word Sūrōyō has been rejected by several academics, in example by Wolfhart Heinrichs who calls the hypothesis "simply naive". (Festschrift Philologica Constantino Tsereteli Dicta, ed. Silvio Zaorani (Turin, 1993) under the chapter entitled "The Modern Assyrians - Name and Nation", pp. 106-107) He alos states that "even if "Syrian" were derived from "Assyrian", it does not mean that the people and culture of geographical Syria are identical to those of geographical Assyria.". Based on this, the question can not be of such importance, if to any importance at all, in the naming dispute as some of the previous writers of this article has tried to present. The TriZ (talk) 20:29, 31 January 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  The neutrality of this article is questionable 

message: This is not mentioned in the article, but it seems fundamental to the topic. --Chriswaterguy talk 06:04, 13 August 2011 (UTC)
replies: text: "Syria" is an English name (from French/Latin) that far predates the formation of the Syrian Repblic (1930); by saying "Syrians" and "Syria", you are using a common shorthand for "Syrian Arab Republic"; this would have been meaningless prior to 1930. But of course the article can also discuss the Arabic term and its history (spoiler: it's from the Greek). --dab (𒁳) 06:50, 25 October 2016 (UTC)
thread_title:  What do Syrians call Syria?