In the Ummah's massive euphoria over Zohran Mamdani's resounding win in the New York mayoral race, the arc light has finally turned to the little-known lady in black, mayoress consort, Rama Duwaji, of Syrian Muslim parentage. Much has been written about Mamdani's Indian descent from a Hindu-origin mother and twelver-Shia father. But how about Duwaji?
Internet searches reveal little about Rama's lineage. Genealogical data locates the surname 'Duwaji' to Syria where it is 'sparsely' identified. One database lists only two instances in Syria, one of whom is listed as 'Ghazi B Duwaji' in a 1970s publication as a Syrian-American alumnus of American University of Beirut (AUB) who worked in the Syrian department of economic planning.
ChatGPT, my mother engine for all things archaic and absurd (and not necessarily in that order), says there are only approximately 59 people worldwide with this surname and its meaning/origin is untraceable, unlike many Arab-Syrian surnames that derive from places, trades, or tribal lineages such as Hajjar (stone cutter), Haddad (blacksmith), Damashqi (from Damascus), Masiry (from Egypt), Turki (from Turkiye), and Hindi (from India).
Lost in the mist of time, I turn to her first name Rama, that sounds civilizationally familiar for no other reason than that it is, of all things, that one thing Indian that Mamdani so grudgingly detests, while owning his multi-culutral roots.
My search of Syrian Arabic names takes me to راما (Rama) that means 'elevated or exalted'. It also leads to 'Rām,' meaning 'peaceful, calm, noble, or pleasant' in that language.
Rama is a popular feminine name in Syria and other Arab countries, often identified with the ancient city of Rameh or Rama, in both Biblical and early Arab sources, as a high or elevated area that is calm and serene.
In Aramaic and Hebrew, both ancient northwestern Semitic languages spoken in the Levant (including ancient Syria), the root R-M or R-M-H means “high,” “elevated,” or “exalted.”
The place name Ramah (רָמָה) in the Hebrew Bible literally means “height” or “high place.”
This root survived in Arabic as رَامَ (rāma), meaning “to aim” or “to reach toward,” and in derived forms denoting “elevation” or “ambition.”
What my searches did not reveal easily is that beyond the shroud of its Arabic overlay, Syria was once the heartland of the Mittani civilization, of which, history records one Tuišeratta or Tushratta as a very significant Mitanni/Hurrian emperor of the 14th century BCE, whose name is a linguistic variant of the Sanskrit Daśaratha. Both the names derive from Indo-Aryan roots: daśa (ten) + ratha (chariot).
For the uninitiated, 'the Mitanni elite, though ruling in northern Syria, bore Indo-Aryan names and deities. They swore oaths by Mitra, Varuna, Indra, and Nasatya. 'This makes Tushratta ↔ Daśaratha a real and well-recognized connection between the Syro-Hittite world and Vedic India.'
This also throws open a parallel window.
Rāma, as we know too well, was the eldest son of Daśaratha our glorious king once, as we have said, also known as the Mittani Tuišeratta. In Sanskrit, Rāma (राम) comes from the root √ram, meaning 'to be pleased, to delight, to rejoice.' So, Rāma literally means 'the delightful one, the pleasing one, or he who brings joy.'
In India, where Mamdani's 'Hindu' mother hails from, and his Khoja-Shia father was once born, Rāma is revered as a symbol of virtue, serenity, and nobility — attributes that echo the meanings attached to Rama in Arabic/Semitic usage (elevation, calm, beauty) that in Sanskrit also goes as Ram's honorific 'Purushottam'.
When I expand my query through my searches, I get a 'could be - should be' response to my discovery. But, one such search throws up a viable entry: Given that Indo-Aryan–speaking groups (the Mitanni) were active in northern Syria and Anatolia around the 15th–13th centuries BCE, and that Semitic languages dominated the Levant, it’s entirely plausible that names like Rama circulated in both spheres, acquiring parallel prestige meanings. There is a case for cultural and linguistic borrowing.
In India male names historically come with a honorific extolling the wealth, virtue, auspiciousness, and grace of the femine divine Sri (श्री). Hence, Sri Ram, that has been reverberating as the blessing and salutation of Jai Sri Ram all over India since time immemorial, seeding nobility, calmness, higher elevation of human endeavor of Ram, with the auspiciousness of grace that comes with श्री.
Women, too, often sport the name of Ram, as in Rampyari, Ramdulari, Ramabai, or simply Rama.
Now that the descendant of Muhammad/Mamadan (Mamdani), the Zohran (dazzler), has come out winner in the Big Melting Pot that is NYC, time seems appropriate for Zohran to also flaunt the Femine Grace of Ram.
Say Rama Mamdani to that!
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