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From Zarathustra to Avraham: An unexpected linguistic connection.

6,000-year-old word hiding in plain sight?!

Did this Ancient Word really Time-Traveled “Across” Millennia?

4 min readMar 11, 2025

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I was writing about Zarathustra when I stumbled upon an ancient linguistic crossroad — a concept that seemingly has traveled “across” millennia, surviving almost intact in distant languages across the world.

Zarathustra’s last name was Spitaman, which translates to today’s Persian “Sepid” — meaning white, pure, or bright. His grandfather is said to have been Farahim Ravan (or Va(e)rahim, as F, V, and B frequently shift across languages over time). The key component here is Vara, which means “across” or “beyond.”

This is where things get interesting. The Persian word Vara (or Vera) means “the other side”, which is also the etymological root of the word “Hebrew” (Ivri)! How is it that two linguistically distant words — one from Indo-Iranian (Persian, Avestan) and the other from Semitic (Hebrew) — share an eerily similar meaning?

The Persian Side of the Story

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mim Armand
mim Armand

Written by mim Armand

Sr Solutions Architect / Technology evangelist and Consultant / Teacher / Artist / Everything!

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