This article: The name "Tadmor" is known from the early second millennium BC; eighteenth century BC tablets from Mari written in cuneiform record the name as "Ta-ad-mi-ir", while Assyrian inscriptions of the eleventh century BC record it as Ta-ad-mar. Aramaic Palmyrene inscriptions themselves showed two variants of the name; TDMR (i.e. Tadmar) and TDMWR (i.e. Tadmor). The etymology of the name is unclear; the standard interpretation, supported by Albert Schultens, connects it to the Semitic word for "date palm", tamar (תמר), thus referring to the palm trees that surrounded the city.The Greek name Παλμύρα (Latinized Palmyra) is first recorded by Pliny the Elder in the 1st century AD. It was used throughout the Greco-Roman world. It is generally believed that "Palmyra" derives from "Tadmor" and two possibilities have been presented by linguists; one view holds that Palmyra was an alteration of Tadmor. According to the suggestion by Schultens, "Palmyra" could have arisen as a corruption of "Tadmor", via an unattested form "Talmura", changed to "Palmura" by influence of the Latin word palma (date "palm"), in reference to the city's palm trees, then the name reached its final form "Palmyra". The second view, supported by some philologists, such as Jean Starcky, holds that Palmyra is a translation of "Tadmor" (assuming that it meant palm), which had derived from the Greek word for palm, "Palame".An alternative suggestion connects the name to the Syriac tedmurtā (ܬܕܡܘܪܬܐ) "miracle", hence tedmurtā "object of wonder", from the root dmr "to wonder"; this possibility was mentioned favourably by Franz Altheim and Ruth Altheim-Stiehl (1973), but rejected by Jean Starcky (1960) and Michael Gawlikowski (1974). Michael Patrick O'Connor (1988) suggested that the names "Palmyra" and "Tadmor" originated in the Hurrian language. As evidence, he cited the inexplicability of alterations to the theorized roots of both names (represented in the addition of -d- to tamar and -ra- to palame). According to this theory, "Tadmor" derives from the... contains an answer for the question: What is the first name of the person who cited the inexplicability of alterations to the theorized roots of both names?, what is it ?


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