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[Facts] Wojdan?
Does anyone have any information on the female Arabic name Wojdan?I've been thinking of it because of the groundbreaking Saudi Olympic athlete.
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I'd look at the Wikipedia talk page for Wojdan Shaherkani. They have some interesting information on the name:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Wojdan_Shaherkani
Apparently it means "excitement, ecstasy".
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Interesting, thanks! I never knew how to read Wikipedia "behind the scenes" discussions like that. It looks from the Wikipedia discussion that Wijdan is the more common spelling of this name. When I google "name meaning Wijdan", a lot comes up. (Granted, who knows how valid any of those websites are, but it shows that it's a known name).But I agree with the Wikipedia commenters that her name in Wikipedia should be spelled Wojdan, because she competed in the Olympics under that spelling.Thanks!
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It's funny: If I tell Google to search for pages with that given name that do *not* contain the family name of the athlete (in about 5 different spellings...), nothing is left - as if that given name did not exist before this Wojdan went to the Olympics.Using Latin letters to write something from Arabic is always quite tricky, and so Wojdan may be just a very unusual transliteration / transcription of something that is quite common. A search for Wjdan, without the "o" then, gives quite a number of people who write their name this way in Latin script. But, first Wjdan looks strange to me, and second I could not find anything about that name either...
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