The things you learn: Murat

I happened across a list of Turkish given names in the German Wikipedia and saw an entry: "Murat: (from Arabic) desired".

And thought, hey! That looks like it's related to trid "to want" in Maltese, presumably the participle.

Always interesting when connections suddenly strike you. And when the little Maltese I picked up helps me figure out something in Arabic (including loans into languages such as Turkish).

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And Recep (as in Recep Tayyip Erdoğan) is apparently the month of Rajab. (No points for guessing where "Tayyip" comes from.)

Paid account expiring: never

I wonder when the latest expiration date of a paid account is -- or, in other words, what's the longest length of time that any LiveJournal user has paid for in advance.

I think two years is not uncommon, but what about five? ten? twenty?

(Probably not twenty, since that would make the expiration after the End of Time...)

The things you learn: Bahrain

Apparently, Bahrain means "two seas".

I knew baħar "sea" and I knew -ayn (mt -ejn) "(dual suffix)", but I never made the connection.