Shifty Romanizations!

In Hebrew school, we learned that the root of a Hebrew word is its first three consonants. For example, the root K-d-sh means "Holy." Here are some of its manifestations:

Kaddish: The prayer we say over the dead;
Kiddush: The prayer we say over wine;
Kadosh: Means "sacred"

Now, let's put this aside for a moment. I've known forever that the Arabic word for Jerusalem is "Quds." This is quite far from the Hebrew "Yerushalayim" ("City of Peace"), and I just assumed that I didn't know the meaning of the Arabic name.

The other day, I read somewhere that "al-Quds" means "The Holy." And I metaphorically slapped myself in the forehead. D'oh!!

Of course! Q and K are often used interchangeably in romanized renditions of Hebrew and Arabic script. So, to put it sort of algebraically:

Quds = Kuds
Kuds - vowel = Kds
Kds = easily identifable cognate for the K-d-sh root I described at the beginning of this post.

It was just that dumb Q that had thrown me all these years! And also a dumb assumption that I made: Just because the city's Arabic name isn't directly equivalent to its Hebrew one, I failed to consider that there might still be a shared root in the Arabic name.