• 1 See Tsegay Berhe G. Libanos & Red. (2005). For an update, see the record on the Beta maṣāḥǝft platf (...)
• 2 See Bausi & Uhlig (2014, pp. 729b and 800c). The form (“Dabra Dammo”) is also the only one mentione (...)

1The entry of the Encyclopaedia Aethiopica dedicated to the well-known monastery of Tǝgray, in northern Ethiopia (Fig. 1), the foundation of which is traditionally attributed to the fifth-sixth century St Abunä Arägawi (that is, the Ǝnda Abunä Arägawi) is “Däbrä Damo”, with a short (non-geminated) m,1 even though also the long (geminated) spelling “Däbrä Dammo” is recorded. Yet, the index of the fifth volume of the Encyclopaedia Aethiopica has reversed this hierarchy and given priority to the form “Däbra Dammo”, and, though listing also “Däbrä Damo” with cross reference to “Däbrä Dammo”, considers “Däbra Dammo” the primary form.2

• 3 The primacy of “Däbrä Dammo” or “Däbrä Damo” is undecidable on a spelling basis, since the syllabic (...)
• 4 See Bausi (2014) for a concise overview on the studies of Ethiopian and Eritrean historical geograp (...)

2Wavering of spelling of this place name in scholarly contributions, either “Däbrä Dammo” or “Däbrä Damo”, is emblematic of the uncertainties of rendering of names (place names as well as personal names) that afflicts Ethiopian and Eritrean studies.3 Transcription of Ethiopian and Eritrean names appears subject to a sort of barbarian, telluric, and uncontrolled variation that, on the one hand, escapes whatever rule and, on the other hand, makes whatever forms equally acceptable and legitimate in this chaos, beyond any understandable linguistic sense, reason, method, and consistency.4

• 5 See in this respect the large index in Nosnitsin (2013), pp. 418–430, and on Däbrä Dammo, and the p (...)

3In this connection, the index of the Encyclopaedia Aethiopica gave priority to the form “Däbrä Dammo” with the intention of correcting a wrong praxis, based on the principle that Däbrä Dammo is the form—beyond any possible doubt—that is used, and was used also in the past as far as we can ascertain, by the local Tǝgrǝñña speakers. The Ethio-SPaRe project led by Denis Nosnitsin recorded this form during the project team’s visit to the monastery in the November–December 2010 campaign. Among the various aspects of fieldwork carried out by this project, precise recording of place names, given in an as precise as possible written and phonetic form, was one of the main tasks, and a very meritorious one indeed.5 If there were any further need of confirmation, the form “Däbrä Dammo”—and only this—is that provided and documented by Hagos Abrha, of Mekelle University, who is a mother-tongue Tǝgrǝñña speaker and a professional linguist and philologist, quite conversant with the region and the place, that he has frequently visited.

• 6 See Conti Rossini (1901, p. 200, l. 18, doc. no. 18), to be interpreted as “Damǝmo” or “Dammǝmo”; s (...)
• 7 See Guidi (1894, p. 74, l. 7): “wäbäʾǝntäzǝ täbǝhǝlä Däbrä Daḥmǝmo”, “and because of this it was ca (...)

4One could add that the spelling “Damǝmo” (with two letters) in the Golden Gospel of Däbrä Libanos, at Ham, could hint at a geminated m.6 Although this form was so far not put in connection with the spelling of the place name, there is not yet any convincing etymology on which to ground a geminated or simple spelling. The form “Damǝmo” could therefore be due to a scribal error, or it could even depend on the Gǝʿǝz (Ethiopic) passage of the Gadla Abunä Arägawi that explains—in all likelyhood, ex post—the place name with the order given by the saint, “demolish it” (“daḥmǝmo”), referred to the ladder used to climb up the mountain (anba) where the monastery is located.7

• 8 See Guidi (1894, pp. 55, 89, 90, 91, 93), who always adopts the form “Dammo”, either isolated or in (...)
• 9 See Conti Rossini (1940, p. 45, n. 1): “Quanto al nome principale del convento, la reduplicazione d (...)

5The question, moreover, is not new. The geminated spelling “Däbrä Dammo” was adopted by scholars who strongly relied directly on well informed Ethiopians and on first-hand evidence, starting from Ignazio Guidi, in his contribution on Gädlä Abunä Arägawi (“Life of Our Father Arägawi”), where he always adopts, certainly not by chance, a geminated form.8 Carlo Conti Rossini also wrote in his article “Pergamene di Debra Dammó” that he took care of letting ascertain as precisely as possible the pronunciation of the name: on his behalf, Antonio Mordini checked the spelling, presumably interviewing more people from the place, on the spot, and the form resulted to be “Dammo”, geminated, and with closed “o” at the end.9

• 10 See Krencker & von Lüpke (1913, pp. 168–194, and also passim).
• 11 As a confirmation of the well-known principle that de nominibus non curant archaeologi (et multi pl (...)
• 12 See Krencker & von Lüpke (1913, p. 234b), “Debra Damo ‘Däbra Dāmmō’”, according to a system consist (...)
• 13 See Littmann (1913, pp. 18, 19, and 23): “Bekannt sind Debra Dāmmō, in Tigrē an der Grenze von ʿAgā (...)

6The treatment of the place name in the Deutsche Aksum-Expedition deserves a special and very careful consideration. If the substantial description of the architecture and decoration of the church in the second volume authored by David Krencker and Theodor von Lüpke (1913, pp. 168–194, and also passim) always adopts the form “Debra Damo”,10 no doubt this was a sort of normalized or simplified form.11 This form had already entered the current use and did not represent any precise phonetic rendering of the place name. The chief of the Deutsche Aksum-Expedition, the great Semitist Enno Littmann, had very clear what was the actual phonetic form: the form with geminated m “Däbra Dāmmō” is accurately recorded in the index to the second volume, in brackets and italicized, near the normalized form “Debra Damo”, with a precise notation of gemination and even vocalic length.12 The geminated form also occurs in the fourth volume, of genuinely linguistic character, as a possible integration of the acephalous “[D]MW^m” (presumably, with pseudo-Sabaic mimation) in the inscription DAE no. 8 (= RIÉ no. 186), l. 21.13

• 14 Conti Rossini started to record the name in the form “Damo, Dâmo” in his first onomastic contributi (...)

7Yet, either the non-phonetic or the normalized tradition—also represented by Conti Rossini himself and canonized by his influential Storia d’Etiopia—had already generally imposed the non-geminated form.14 “Däbrä Damo” is also the only form that two further very influential works like Taddesse Tamrat’s Church and State in Ethiopia (1972, p. 319a, index) and George B. W. Huntingford’s The Historical Geography of Ethiopia (1989, p. 283c, index) adopt, the latter still being the only available monograph on Ethiopian (and Eritrean) historical geography. Through them, this form entered the secondary literature as approved by several authors, for whom it is superfluous to provide further details here.

• 15 For an emblematic case, see “Dabra Dāmo” in Dombrowski (1983, vol. 2, pp. 316–317, in the repertory (...)

8To this tradition also belongs the German branch of Ethiopian studies headed by Ernst Hammerschmidt (for example 1967, p. 174, index, “Däbrä Damo”), who does not appear to have been a careful reader of Enno Littmann’s Deutsche Aksum-Expedition.15 Years of teaching experience confirmed me that German speakers who do not have a specific professional linguistic training have difficulty in perceiving and pronouncing consonantal length: this is a quite understandable phenomenon, since consonantal length has no phonemic status in German. The illuminating case study by Altmann, Berger, and Braun (2012) highlights that, comparing native German, native Italian, and advanced German learners of Italian, non-native vowel length contrast is perceived (by Italians) just as well as the native consonantal length contrast, while, on the contrary, non-native consonantal length contrast is perceived (by Germans) poorly compared to the native vocalic length contrast.

• 16 See for example the Tǝgrǝñña sermon on Abunä Arägawi available on YouTube (<https://www.youtube.com (...)

9In a kind answer to my query, in order to come up with an explanation concerning this divergent tradition, Getatchew Haile undertook a few interviews and reported that, according to his test, “All Amharic speakers pronounced it as Damo, like my teachers […], while the Tigrigna speakers as Dammo. I guess it can be a contribution if we take the occasion to explain this fact, that it is a regional variation” (email exchange of 20 and 22 June 2015). This is an important contribution in fact, that injects a new factor useful to understand the development of the tradition, that is, that the non-geminated form accepted by scholars, among others, of the caliber of Taddesse Tamrat and Getatchew Haile, finds support in the Amharic-speaking Church tradition and on its rooting in Amharic-speaking areas. That this tradition was in turn deemed of higher and more prestigious rank than the Tǝgrǝñña one—in the Ethiopian context, but also outside of it—would explain the large generalization of the “Däbrä Damo” form, which in fact, in some cases at least, also occurs in Tǝgrǝñña speakers’ mouths.16 At present, however, in the absence of any systematic investigation on the ground, it is impossible to draw any isogloss demarcating the areas of distribution of the geminated and non-geminated forms, which would not necessarily overlap with the distribution of Amharic- and Tǝgrǝñña speakers, these latter being to large extent also Amharic-speakers.

• 17 The form “Damô Debra” recorded by Beccari (1917, p. 105b) from writings, letters, and documents iss (...)
• 18 For example “ʿAdwa” with initial ayn, according to the Tǝgrǝñña pronunciation, not “Adwa” according (...)
• 19 See for example a clear statement of this principle of toponymic research in Rivoira (2013, p. 64): (...)
• 20 See the clear methodological statement in the authoritative The Oxford Handbook of Names and Naming(...)

10If we also concede in hypothesis that the form “Däbrä Damo” was early canonized in the prestigious Amharic-speaking ecclesiastical tradition,17 why should this form—that reflects a non-local tradition—be adopted in scholarly (linguistic, historical, philological) contexts? at variance with what is done for all other Tǝgray place names that are given according to their local form?18 and against basic rules of toponymic research? It might be obvious, but it is still worth reminding that there is no other possible criterion to determine the primary linguistic form of a place name—the “authentic” one, as geolinguists say19—than the evidence of the form used by the local inhabitants in their own language. Since place names are “cultural artefacts which arise from the interaction between language and environment”, there is no other way, all the more in a scholarly context, than to record and transcribe them as faithfully as possible in the form as they arise from this delicate interaction.20 In this case, the only form that matches these mandatory and essential requirements is “Däbrä Dammo”.