Negus is the word for "king" in the Ethiopian Semitic languages and a title[ Negus. Amharic nəgus, from Geez nĕgūša nagašt king of kings. First Known Use: 1594 Merriam Webster dictionary] in pre-1974 Ethiopia. The negus is referred to as Al-Najashi (النجاشي) in the Islamic tradition.
Etymology
Sometime during the development of the
Ethio-Semitic language family
Malik the original
Semitic root for king, was elevated to the generic word for "god" in the form of the
broken plural "ʾämlak, ʔamlāk," as well as the word for angelic or divine when conjugated as
melekot. It is possible the word related to Hebrew El (
Elohim) or
Allah (Ilah) was lost due to a
word taboo much like
YHWH. During this time the ancient semitic term for a ruler or lord, n-g-s (from Proto-Semitic √ngɬ 'to push, press for work'), began to mean "king." Along with that term, in the early Ethiopian state of D'mt the
South Semitic term
Mukarrib (priest king), mostly associated with the Kingdom of Sheba, was in use and the Ge'ez
malak (መለክ) remained in throne names into the
Gondarine period. The universal existence of a
semantic shift in n-g-s throughout Ethio-Semitic is evidence that they don't represent separate branches of the Semitic language family.
In an ancient Aramaic inscription mentioning the god ʿAṯtar his name is followed by the title 𐡍𐡂𐡔 (), corresponding to Ancient North Arabian 𐪌𐪔𐪆 (), meaning "the ruler."
History
Negus is a noun derived from the Ge'ez
Semitic root ngś, meaning "to reign". The title Negus literally translated to
Basileus (
Greek language: βασιλεύς) in
Ancient Greek, which was seen many times on Aksumite currency. The title has subsequently been used to translate the word "king" or "emperor" in
Bible and other literature. In more recent times, it was used as an honorific title bestowed on governors of the most important provinces (kingdoms):
Gojjam,
Begemder,
Wello,
Tigray Province and the seaward kingdom, (where the variation
Bahri Negasi (Sea King), was the title of the ruler of present-day central Eritrea). The military title "Meridazmatch" was initially used by the rulers of Shewa until the reign of
Sahle Selassie, when he and his successors adopted the royal title as well.
It was mistakenly used to refer to the
Atse in early western sources and was loaned into
Hindi through Arabic as "नजाशी."
In popular culture
See also
Footnotes
