According to Wikipedia, “the name Baghdad is pre-Islamic, and its origin is disputed. The site where the city of Baghdad developed has been populated for millennia. Archaeological evidence shows that the site of Baghdad was occupied by various peoples long before the Arab conquest of Mesopotamia in 637 CE, and several ancient empires had capitals located in the surrounding area. Arab authors, realizing the pre-Islamic origins of Baghdad’s name, generally looked for its roots in Middle Persian. They suggested various meanings, the most common of which was “bestowed by God“. Modern scholars generally tend to favor this etymology, which views the word as a Persian compound of bagh “god” and dād “given”. In Old Persian the first element can be traced to boghu and is related to Indo-Iranian bhag and Slavic bog “god”. A similar term in Middle Persian is the name Mithradāt (Mehrdad in New Persian), known in English by its borrowed Hellenistic form Mithridates, meaning “Given by Mithra” (dāt is the more archaic form of dād, related to Sanskrit dāt, Latin dat and English donor), ultimately borrowed from Persian Mehrdad.” With the information just quoted, it may be worthwhile to read an earlier article on this site about the Ukrainian Language >
The “Cradle of Civilizations” book published earlier this year has many more insights on the topic of linguistics.
