Babar (Urdu: بابر ), also variously spelled as Baber,[1] Babur,[2] and Babor is a male given name of Pashto, and Persian origin, and a popular male given name in Pakistan.[3] It is generally taken in reference to the Persian babr (Persian: ببر), meaning "tiger".[1] There is a similar name in connotation to the Arabic male given form and generic name of the animal by the name "Nimr" (Arabic: نَمِر namir) which means "yellow-black stripped cat", i.e. "tiger".

The word repeatedly appears in Ferdowsi's Shahnameh and was borrowed into the Turkic languages of Central Asia.[2][4] Thackston argues for an alternate derivation from the PIE word "beaver", pointing to similarities between the pronunciation Bābor and the Russian bobr (бобр, "beaver").[5]

The most famous bearer of this name was Zahiruddin Muhammad Babur, known popularly as Babur, a prince of the Timurid dynasty who founded the Mughal Empire, and the name is popular in Bahrain, Afghanistan, as well as Muslim communities in South and Central Asia.

Geographical

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People

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Fiction

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Other uses

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  • BaBar, a nuclear physics experiment

References

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  1. ^ a b EB (1878).
  2. ^ a b EB (1911).
  3. ^ Eraly 2007, pp. 18–20.
  4. ^ Thumb, Albert, Handbuch des Sanskrit, mit Texten und Glossar, German original, ed. C. Winter, 1953, Snippet, p. 318
  5. ^ Babur, Emperor of Hindustan (2002). The Baburnama: Memoirs of Babur, Prince and Emperor. translated, edited and annotated by W. M. Thackston. Modern Library. ISBN 0-375-76137-3.

Sources

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