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Journal of Linguistics & Literature Vol 1, No 1, 2016 61

Etymology of the Saraiki Language Name

Dr. Ghulam Raza*

Abstract

For the name, Saraikī, of one of the Indo-Aryan languages, many

etymological descriptions have been reported in the literature. Due to a

variety of these descriptions, different word forms like Saraikī and Siraikī

are implied in Roman script which dictate different pronunciations of the

name. In this article, I discuss different views of linguists and historians

about the derivation of the name of the Saraiki language and support the

hypothesis that the very name Saraikī is plausibly derived from the word

Sauvīra by advancing justifications on linguistic grounds, mainly drawing

on phonological aspects of the language. Such a derivation of the name

licenses the letter a following the first consonant s while spelling it in

Roman script. I also provide evidences to nullify the alternate hypothesis of

derivation of the name from the word Siro. The discussion results into the

suggestion that the sole word form, Saraikī, should be considered correct

and be adopted for the name of the Saraiki language rather than other word

forms such as Siraikī or Seraikī.

Keywords

The Saraiki language, etymology, accounts of derivation, Sauvira,

phonology

____________________________________________________________

*Pakistan Institute of Engineering and Applied Sciences (PIEAS),

Islamabad [email protected]

mailto:[email protected]

Etymology of the Saraiki Language Name 62

1 Introduction

Saraiki is spoken by millions of people around the world, most of them

living in the central districts of Pakistan, spanning over some of the areas

of all the existing four provinces of the country, and therefore is called the

language of central Pakistan. Before, it has also been called as

Hindi/Hindki (O‘Brien, 1881, Turner, 1924), Jatki/Jataki (O‘Brien, 1881;

Burton, 1849) and also Jagdali (O‘Brien, 1881). In addition to these names,

there were many local names of it, for example, Multani (O‘Brien, 1881,

Bahl 1936), Riasti/Bahawalpuri, Derewali, Uchi, (Bomford, 1895),

Shahpuri, Thallochi/Thalli (Wilson, 1899, Smirnov, 1975), etc. Some of its

names like Lahnda/Lahndi (Wilson, 1899, Smirnov, 1975) and Western

Punjabi (Bomford, 1895), were crafted by linguists for referring to this

language. With the passage of time all other names became part of the

history and the one name, ‗Saraiki‘, became popular for this language. This

was due to the consensus of Saraiki intellectuals in a meeting held in 1962

to adopt and promote only the one name ‗Saraiki‘ (Khan, 1995:105;

Mughal, 2002:163). Since then, this name has been in regular use in the

literature and mass media for the language of central Pakistan.

Due to dearth of written resources about history and culture of the Saraiki

people, researchers are unable to know confidently about the source word

of the name, Saraiki. Many opinions posited in this regard in 19th and 20th

century seem to be based on speculations. One of the two most believed

impressions is that the name of Saraiki language is derived from the Sindhi

word Siro ‗upper part or head‘ and the other is that the name of the

language is derived from the name Sauvīra of a state in old India. The

linguists who follow the former idea advocate that the first letter s in

Saraiki should be followed by the short front vowel /i/ and the supporters of

the latter idea urge to put schwa /ə/ (the letter a) after the first letter in

Saraiki. So, in Roman script, based on different implied pronunciations of

the name and due to ambiguous letters for the vowel sounds of English,

different word forms for the Saraiki language name have been in use. In all

of these words (Saraiki, Seraiki, Siraiki, Suraiki, Sraiki, Sraeki), there are


always the same three consonants (s, r and k) in the same order but

different vowels in between.

Contemporary Saraiki is natively written in Extended Arabic Script1 and

the short vowels that are in the form of diacritics are usually not put with

(over/under) consonants. So without diacritics, the word Saraiki and Siraiki

in Arabic script are written with the same pattern of alphabets and it is on

the discretion of the reader whether he/she assumes a or i after the first

consonant in the word Saraiki. In this article, different accounts of the

derivation of the Saraiki language name are explored and analysed to reach

the most plausible account of derivation and hence to know which short

vowel should come after the first letter in the name. The rest of the paper is

organized as follows. Section 2 explores different accounts of derivation of

the name in detail. The arguments to refute the hypothesis of deriving the

name from the Sindhi word ‗Siro‘ are given in Section 3. Section 4

provides argumentation to support the hypothesis of deriving the name

from the word ‗Sauvira‘ and Section 5 concludes the paper.

2 Accounts of the derivation of the Saraiki language name

In Indo-Aryan forms of speech, language names are made in the following

ways (Grierson, 1930):

• The name of the country in which it is spoken is taken

without alteration.

• The name of the language is formed by the addition of the

Persian suffix -ī to the name of the country.

• The name of the language ends in –ī, having come down

through Prakrit, being derived from a Sanskrit original in -

ikā or –ī and not being directly formed from the modern

name of the country.

• The name of the language is a modern formation, derived

directly from a newly created name of country.

1 Saraiki like Persian and Urdu is written in Arabic script. All these languages have also

added more symbols to the script for their peculiar sounds. Hence the term of Extended

Arabic Script is used here.


Language names therefore are either mere the names of countries or

otherwise usually carry the endings –ī or –kī. The –kī ending is originally

derived from the adjectival form kerā of Prakrit with some phonological

erosion (Cardona and Jain, 2003:233) and, now a days, is used mostly in

Genitive construction of Hindi/Urdu. The name of the Saraiki language in

many accounts has also been derived from the name of some country or the

name of some city or some other spatial noun. However, in some accounts,

derivation from some other nouns is also reported. The following

subsections describe the derivation of the different word forms for the

name. Many of the accounts given here could be found in Zami, 1970;

Hussaini, 1972; Wagha, 1990; Kalanchvi, 1994; Pervaiz, 2001 and Javaid,

2004.

2.1 Derivation of the word form ‘Saraiki’

Different scholars have mentioned different origins of the name of the

language. The word form ‗Saraiki‘ is believed to be derived from the

different source words by different scholars. These source words are

described in detail in the following:

i) From the source word ‘Sauvīrā’

Two countries of Sindhu and Sauvira are mentioned in a very old and

famous Sanskrit epic, Mahabharata (Rahman, 2002). These at present can

roughly be taken as the province of Sindh and the Saraiki Punjab of

Pakistan. Long before, Al-Beruni had located Sauvira in Multan and

Jahrawar (Al-Beruni, 1910:300,302). The latter region, Jharawar, indicated

by Al-Beruni himself, lay at the junction of the Jhelam and the Chenab

above Multan (Mukherjee, 1989:77). Some other scholars (Mirchandani,

1980:31; Sircar, 1967:73—74) have also reported Sindhu-Sauvira as

‗neighbouring countries of the Punjab‘ with Sindhu on the west and

Sauvira on the east of the Indus.

Dani (1981), however, locates Sindhu in the province of Sindh and Sauvira

to the east of the river Indus much higher up. He claims that Sindhi


language is confined to the lower Indus valley while Saraiki is now spoken

in much the same area where Sauvira is located by Al-Beruni. With this

distribution of languages in the area, he postulates that the very name

Saraikī is a corruption of the original term Sauvīrākī.

ii) From the source word ‘Sarāī’

Zami (1970) and Kalanchvi (1994) mention that there lived people of the

Sarāī caste in Sindh valley who once ruled over this region and Saraiki

language name might be after this tribe‘s name. The Sarāī tribe is also

mentioned in a gazetteer of Sindh (Hughes, 1876:31). In a glossary of

tribes and castes (Rose, 1997:381—382) the term Sarāī is defined as in the

following:

―Sarai.- (1) A Jat tribe found in Amritsar and Gurdaspur, in which

latter District its members are sometimes called Shaikhs, as being

leaders of Sultanias or followers of Sakhi Sarwar. As such they

receive small offerings, though they are rather shy of admitting the

fact. It is not certain that this tribe is distinct from (2).

(2) A tribe of Jat chiefly found in Gurdaspur and Sialkot, though

there are a few on the upper and middle Sutlej also. There are said

to be Sarai Rajputs in Sialkot, who are Bhattis descended from an

ancestor called Sarai who settled in the Hafizabad tahsil. Sarai is

also said to be a well-known Jat clan in Jullundur and the

neighbouring districts. Tod makes Sahrai the title of a race of

Punwar Rajputs who founded a dynasty at Aror in Sindh on the

eastern bank of the Indus and "gave their name Sehl or Sehr as a

titular appellation to the country and its princess, and its inhabitants

the Sehrais." The Sarai of Gurdaspur returned themselves in 1881

as tribe Sindhu, clan Sarai, but the Sindhu appear to have no such

sept. The Sarai may however be an offshoot of the Sindhu and they

certainly do not intermarry with that tribe.

(3) The title of the Klahora family of Rajanpur in Dera Ghazi Khan,

which is known as that of Mian Sahib Sarai, According to

Mackenzie the Sarais have a holy reputation and retain an uncut


lock on the crown of their heads -- whence the title (fr. sir 'head').

But the Dera Ghazi Khan Gazetteer (1898) says that males of the

Sarai family do not cut the hair or moustache, and the Sarai is a

common term for a native of Sind.‖

iii) From the source word ‘Sarāwā’

Zami (1970) has mentioned that there was a famous trade-city, Sarāwā,

near the border of Sindh and Multan. There was a very old university in

this city. Nowadays this city exists with the name of Sarwāhī in the

district of Rahimyar Khan. Here a language named Sarāwāī was

developed and had its own script. This name later became Saraikī.

iv) From the source word ‘Sarāñ’

In another account, Zami (1970) traces the origin of the name in the Saraiki

word Sarāñ ‗hotel‘ or ‗inn‘. The equivalent word for Sarāñ in Urdu/Hindi

is Sarai. There were many Sarai/Sarīñ in Multan region for serving and

hosting travellers, merchants and business-men. In these Sarai/Sarīñ people

from around the country spoke the local language Multani by mixing some

words of their own languages and this mixed language started to be called

Saraikī, meaning the language of Sarai/Sarāñ.

v) From the source word ‘Sarāsvatī’

Hussaini (1972) in an account says that a mighty river Sarsūtī (Sarāsvatī)

has been mentioned in the hymns of Rigveda which could be the river of

Quranic Ashaab-ur-Ras ‗people of Ras‘ and derives the name of the

language from the name of this river.

vi) From the source word ‘Sārah’

Fikri (1997) traces the root of the word Saraiki back to the word Sārah.

There has been an Arab district, Sarka, after the name of Bibi Sarah, the

wife of Prophet Ibrahim. This district has also been called as Sārka, Sarāka,

Sārkīn, Sarākīn and the words like Sārāsīn, Sarākīnū, Sarākīnūs were


initially used to call its inhabitants only and later they began to be used for

all Muslims. Fikri postulates that the people might have called the language

of Muslim rulers/chiefs (Sarākīnūs) in Multan as Saraiki.

vii) From the source word ‘Sārh’

In another etymological description, Fikri (1997) derives the name from the

words Sārh and aikī. He takes the first morpheme in the meaning of

‗fact/knowledge/news‘ and the second morpheme in the meaning of ‗one‘

and extends the meaning of the word Saraiki from ‗one fact‘ to ‗a language

of describing facts‘ or ‗a language of knowledge and cognizance‘.

viii) From the source word ‘Sanb’

The city of Multan was formerly called as Sanb or Sanābpur (Hunter,

1908). Fikri (1997) reported the meaning of the word Sanb as ‗to become

nearer to God‘ and hinted that the name of the Saraiki language might have

roots in this former name of Multan.

ix) From the source word ‘Sarāīragh’

A Baloch writer (Mari, online) considering the location of the Saraiki

region relative to the Balochi speaking area, claims that the word Saraiki

has in fact originated from the Balochi word Sarāīragh used in the

meaning of ‗the lower‘ or ‗slope‘.

x) From the source word ‘Sar’

Sindh was brought under the Arabs‘ rule after it was conquered by

Muhammad Bin Qasim, an Umayyad‘s commander, in 712 A.D. Many

soldiers of his army were from Basrah and Sheeraz, cities of Iran, and were

Persian speaking (Jalibi, 1987). After Muhammad Bin Qasim, many other

governors of the Umayyad and Abbasid dynasties ruled over the region.

Many commanders, officials of the government and preachers of the


religion from different strongholds of the Islamic empire reached here and

among them the Persian speaking were in majority (Collection,1971).

After some years, rule of Arabs expanded to Multan and the Sar,

‗boundary‘ between Sindh and Punjab established and due this reason the

language of Multan is called Saraiki, in the meaning of the language of the

Sar ‗border‘ (Hosseini, 1997).

2.2 Derivation of the word form ‘Seraiki’

In Pakistani English media, the word form Seraiki is also used for the name

of the Saraiki language. This form of the name, however, cannot be directly

implied in any account of the derivation.

2.3 Derivation of the word form ‘Siraiki’

Two source words Siro and Sirā are used to derive the form Siraikī of the

name. These accounts are narrated in detail in the following:

i) From the source word ‘Siro’

In linguistic literature, the Saraiki language name has been repeatedly

mentioned to be derived from the Sindhi word Siro. Burton (1849), as far

as I know, is the first person who described this derivation. According to

him the corrupted dialect of Punjabi in Sindh is called Siraiki due to Siro

‗upper Sindh‘, where it is commonly spoken by the people.

Burton, however, has not quoted any local reference for this derivation.

Later on, other linguists like Grierson and Shackle described the same

etymology of the Saraiki language name. Grierson (1894—1928) has

explained that the word Siraiki is derived from Siro which in turn is derived

from sir ‗head‘. From Siro he takes the meaning of extremity of anything

and hence, the upper part of Sindh, from the northern frontier down to, say,

the 27th degree of north latitude, about midway between Larkana and

Sehwan. And from Siraiki he takes the meaning of ‗the language of the


upstream country‘. Shackle (1976:2) also derived the word Siraiki from

Siro in the meaning of ‗language of the north‘. He although later reported

that this etymology of the Saraiki language name is not verified (Shackle,

1977:388).

ii) From the source word ‘Sirā’

Hakeem Faqeer Ilahi Bakhsh (1960) claimed that the region between

Bhakkar and Multan was once called Sirā and, the Sirāī people and the

Siraikī language are after the name of this region. His claim has also been

narrated in Pervaiz (2001) and Rasoolpuri (2010). Later, Kalanchvi (1994)

claimed that the whole Saraiki region in fact has been called Sirā or Siro in

Sindh and its people and their language therefore have been called Sirāīs

and Siraikī, the latter of which is now called Saraikī.

2.4 Derivation of the word form ‘Suraiki’

On the internet, I have also seen the word form, Suraiki, to be used for the

Saraiki language name. There is an account which supports this form of the

name. There lived Asury people who worshiped the Sun. The Sanskrit

word Asury is derived from Surya ‗Sun‘ as mentioned in (Javaid, 2004).

Asury people ruled over Sindh for three thousand years and they spoke

Asury or Asurki (Zami, 1970) which later took the present form Suraiki.

The word form Suraiki could also be assumed to be directly derived from

the word Surya ‗Sun‘.

2.5 Derivation of the word form ‘Sraiki’

In an account it is said that a Hindu, Sri Ram Kysath, of Uch was a great

literary figure and author of many books. The language was named ‗Sri

Ram Puri‘ after his name (Hasan, 2001). This name with the passage of

time became Sraiki. Zami (1970) explains that the meanings of Sri/Shri in

Sanskrit and Hindi are chief, scholar and intellectual and therefore the

Sraiki language means the language of chiefs, scholars and intellectuals.


3 Negating the derivation of the name from the source

word ‘Siro’ or ‘Sira’

There are some problems in the derivation of the word form Siraiki from

the Sindhi word Siro. One is of the adding the suffix –kī to it. In Sindhi -kī/-

kā/-ke suffixes are rarely used; instead the native -jī/-jo/-je suffixes are

used. Names of Sindhi dialects, however, have been made by adding the

Persian suffix –ī to the spatial relational terms representing the regions

where dialects are spoken. For example, Vicholi is derived from Vicholo

‗the central part‘ and Lari is derived from Laru ‗the lower part‘. In the

contemporary literature, (Pirzado, 2009) the dialect of Sindhi spoken in the

upper Sindh has been reported with the name of Siroli derived from Siro.

Were the Saraiki language name derived from the Sindhi word Siro by

adding the suffix -ī or –jī, its name would have been Siroī or Sirojī

respectively. The suffix -ki in the name hints that the name has not been

made by following the rules of Sindhi morphology.

In Saraiki, however, although genitive suffixes are -dī/-dā/-de/-diyāñ, there

are some words which have been made by adding -kī/-ka/-ke suffixes. For

example, vadhī-kī ‗aggression‘ is derived from vadh ‗out of bound‘ and be-

īmān-kī ‗dishonesty is derived from be-īmān ‗dishonest‘. There are two

cities in the present Sindh, Ghotki and Dahirki, the names of which carry

the -kī suffix and interestingly Saraiki is natively spoken in these cities

(Rasoolpuri, 2010:98). Two names, Belcohki (Burton, 1849) and Hindki

(Turner, 1924), which also carry the -kī suffix, have also been in use to

refer the Saraiki language. If we suppose that the Saraiki suffix -kī is added

to the Sindhi word Siro, one question which still remains there is how

Sirokī transformed into Siraikī while the first one is at least as fluent in

speaking as the second one.

So, the second problem is of the word Siro itself. In Saraiki, Sirā is the

equivalent word to the Sindhi word Siro. An alternate supposition can

therefore be made that the word Siraikī is derived from the Saraiki word

Sirā as it is done by Hakeem Ilahi Bakhsh (1960) and later by Kalanchvi

(1994) as already mentioned in Section 2.3 above. Their claims of some

region to be called as Sirā, however, cannot be authenticated through


genuine resources. Native speakers would not call their region, where they

lived, by giving it a name like Sirā as some smaller regions are given

spatial relational names in the context of a larger region and those smaller

regions natively are called by their proper names. Furthermore, as already

discussed, the spatial relational nouns are usually used to form the names of

dialects, not the names of languages. If we believe that the name of the

Saraiki language also is derived from a spatial relational noun then the

more plausible account of the derivation seems to be from the word Sar as

mentioned in Section 2.1 rather than the words Siro or Sira.

Believing in the derivation of the language name from a spatial relational

noun Siro has caused the third problem of ambiguity which is present in the

word form, Siraiki. Grierson (1894—1928:9,140) explained this ambiguity

very well as in the following:

―It is evident that this can have two meanings. Either it may mean

‗the Sindhi spoken in Upper Sindh,‘ or it may mean ‗the Lahnda

spoken higher up the Indus than Sindh,‘ and, as a matter of fact, it is

used in Sindh in both these senses. In order to avoid confusion, I

shall henceforth call the former ‗Siraiki Sindhi,‘ and the latter

‗Siraiki Lahnda.‘ There are numerous immigrants from Lahnda-

speaking tracts in Sindh, so that the province has a considerable

population whose language is Siraiki Lahnda. - - - As for Siraiki

Sindhi, an examination of the specimens shows that it differs from

the standard Sindhi of the Vicholo only in having a more clearly

articulated pronunciation, and a slightly different vocabulary. This

does not entitle it to be classed as a separate dialect, and I hence

class Siraiki Sindhi as a form of Vicholi. - - - It is true that the

word ‗Siraiki‘ is employed to indicate a form of speech, but this is

not any dialect of Sindhi.‖

Although Grierson asserts that Saraiki language is not a dialect of Sindhi,

he accepts that the derivation description of its name from Sindhi word Siro

makes it ambiguous to consider it also as a dialect of Sindhi. After Burton

and Girerson, the word Siraiki began to be used to refer to the language of

the upper country and the word Sirais began to be used to mean the men of


the upper country. It is, for example, evidenced in the gazetteers of Sindh

published in 1907 and 1968:

―In this region there is also a distinct dialect in use, known as Jatki

or Siraiki (i.e., the language of the north country), which is common

to it and part of the Punjab and is regarded by Sindhis as a dialect of

Punjabi. Punjabis, on the other hand, are said to consider it a dialect

of Sindhi.‖ (Aitken, 1907:189)

―The rise of the "Sirais" (men of the upper country), as the Kalhoras

and Talpurs were commonly called in Lower Sind, changed all

this.‖ (Aitken, 1907:116; Sorley, 1968:169)

Lambrick (1975:213) describes that many Jat tribes like Sayals, Joyos and

Khuhawars migrated from neighbouring regions to Sindh in relatively

modern times. They were either disciples or supporters of Kalhoras. The

generic term for all these tribes was used as Sirai which at first meant just

‗a man from the north‘ and later it became an honorific title for the Kalhora

dynasty. Here, again I will argue that some title could not be honorific if it

is derived from some spatial relational noun rather than deriving it from the

proper name of the region. For example, ‗American Lady‘ is honorific than

‗Western Lady‘. Hence I believe that by the term Sarāī one should have

meant ‗a person from the region Sauvīrā‘ which later became an honorific

title for some tribes who migrated to Sindh.

4 Reinforcing the ‘Saraiki’ form of the name

In the previous section I showed that deriving the name from the spatial

relational nouns of Siro and Sira is problematic and is linguistically

unjustifiable. Deriving the name from the Persian word, Sar, however, is

not as much problematic, supposing that by adding the suffix –i to the word

Sar the name became Sari/Sarai which natively used to be called Saraiki.

In this section I show the plausibility of deriving the name from the state

name, Sauvira and report some other facts which reinforce the ‗Saraiki‘

form of the name.


When the suffixes –ī and –kī are added to the word Sauvīrā, two word

forms are generated, Sauvīrāī and Sauvīrākī. It looks as if the consonant v

with its neighbouring vowels dropped with the passage of time and the

name became simpler as Sarāī or Saraikī. Elision here took place to

make the pronunciation of the name simple from four syllables to three

syllables. In Saraiki, words of four syllables are not so common; shortening

is therefore quite a legitimate process in such cases.

The contraction of Sauvīrāī to Sarāī and hence that of Sauvīrākī to Saraikī

can be best explained by two phonological processes. First is the deletion

of v. In Saraiki the consonant v is not a labio-dental fricative (obstruent) as

it is in English; it is rather labio-dental approximant in Saraiki (Varma

1936:72) which is called a semi-vowel because sometimes it behaves like

vowels in phonological processes like nasalization etc. (Syed, 2009). When

a semi-vowel immediately follows a vowel, it merges into the vowel

because the occurrence of two consecutive vowels which is called hiatus or

umlaut is not accepted in many languages of the world including Saraiki.

This phenomenon is explained by the following two examples in Saraiki:

ro (weep)+vā → ruā not *ro-vā (make someone weep)

pā-va-lī → pao-lī (a caste name)

So, in this process the word Sauvīrāī become Sauerāī. The second process is

the vowel shortening. In Saraiki we don‘t find a word having two long

vowels or diphthongs. If Saraiki takes even a loan word with two long

vowels, it shortens one of the long vowels as the following examples of

Arabic loanwords show:

Arabic → Saraiki

/īmān/ → [imān]

/hārūn/ →[harūn]

/fārūq/ →[farūq]

/kāināt/ → [kaināt]

In all of the above loanwords from Arabic, the first long vowel of the

original Arabic words changes into short vowel in Saraiki. Due to vowel


shortening the word Sauerāī results into Sarāī.2 The like could be the case

for Sauvīrākī to Sauerākī to Saraikī. Hussaini (1972) also hinted that the

word Saraiki originated from Sauerākī.

The Sarāī tribe mentioned in Section 2.1 might have descended from the

king in whose name the Sauvīrā state was named. Otherwise, it could also

be assumed that people living in the region of Sauvīrā mentioned by

Dani and others were called Sarāī and their language was called the Sarāī

language after the name Sauvīrā as people living in Sindh are called Sindhi

and their language is called the Sindhi language. Some of tribes adopted the

title of Sarāī for them specially those who migrated from Sauvīrā to other

regions, for example, to Sindh (Lambrick, 1975). We get the evidence for

the claim that the present Saraikī language was called Sarāī from

Wathen‘s article (1837:352—353) in which he included alphabets plate for

some languages. On that plate, Sarāī is written as an alternate name for

Multani, presently called Saraikī. An image for that portion of the plate is

shown in Figure 1 below.

Figure 1: An image of alphabets plate from Wathen‘s article showing alternate name Sarai

for Multani language which is now called Saraiki

2 Dr. Nasir Abbas Syed is of the view that the simplification of Sauvirai to Sarai can be

explained with a better theoretical support if the concepts of mora and harmonic serialism

in optimality theory are invoked. I am deeply thankful to him for his valuable directions

and useful remarks on the first and pre-final drafts of this article.


So, the derivation of the language name, Saraiki, from the proper noun

Sauvira seems to be more plausible as it does not create any kind of

ambiguity, it is according to the naming convention noted by Grierson

(1930) in Indo Aryan forms of speech and furthermore this etymology is

linguistically justifiable. It is important to mention here that some poets of

Saraiki have perhaps referred the same state of Sauvira in their poetry by

giving it a new name of Saraikistan or Saraik (Buzdar, 2014).

To guess about relative number of people agreeing on different forms of

the Saraiki language name, different tokens from five websites were

searched on 19/11/2013 and their number of hits are recorded in Table 1. In

Figure (2a) results are reported after a general search of tokens. In web

search the minus operator is used to make it sure that the retrieved results

should have some specific form exclusively. The results of exclusive search

of tokens are shown in Figure (2b). These results show that the form

Saraiki is more popular among the masses. One can check the trend at any

time in future by repeating the experiment.


a) General search of tokens b) Exclusive search

of tokens

Figure 2: Web hits of different tokens

On the internet, in Devanagari script also, the Saraiki form (सराइकी) is much

more common than the Seraiki form (सेराइकी) and the Siraiki form (ससराइकी).

5 Conclusion

In this article it is shown that there exists a huge variety of etymological

descriptions of the Saraiki language name. Total fourteen accounts were

reported here; ten of the accounts dictate the word form Saraiki, two dictate

the word form Siraiki, one dictates the word form Suraiki and one the word

form Sraiki.

Some of the widely believed etymological descriptions were analysed in

detail and it was argued that the derivation of the name from the Sindhi

word Siro is problematic and cannot be verified. The main problem with

this derivation is that people become too confused to determine whether the

Saraiki form of speech is a separate language or mere a dialect of the

Sindhi language. On the other hand the derivation from the source word

Sauvira is according to the naming tenets of the Indo-Aryan languages and

no ambiguity is found in it. The historical and regional facts and knowledge


of linguistics imply that the name of the language, Saraiki, is most

probably derived from the source word Sauvira.

So, the linguistic and historical facts and impressions of common people as

noted in Table 1 all advocate that the word form, Saraiki, be used for the

name of the language. Use of other word forms like Siraiki, Seraiki or any

other need to be avoided for the Saraiki language name.

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etymology of the saraiki language name - islamia …iub.edu.pk/jll/jll2016/paper_3_2016.pdf ·...

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