ἄλφα 2 <Semitic; Roman period>
👉 ἄλφα – a Phoenician word for ‘bull, ox’ (Plut., Mor. 738a) or ‘head of bull/cow’ (Hsch. α 3321).
⚠ Plut., Mor. 738a: (...) ὅν (scil. Κάδμον) φασι τὸ ἄλφα πάντων προτάξαι διὰ τὸ Φοίνικας οὕτω καλεῖν τὸν βοῦν (...) – “(...) who (scil. Cadmus) is said to have placed alpha first because it is the Phoenician name for an ox (...)” (trans. F.H. Sandbach); Hsch. α 3321: ἄλφα· βοὸς κεφαλή. <Φοίνικες> – “alpha: head of bull/cow. <Phoenicians>”; in the manuscript, the ethnonym Φοίνικες appears in the previous gloss (Hsch. α 3320: ἀλύω) and was transposed by the modern editors into the next one (commonly accepted).
🅔 A distorted Phoenician word – Phoenician and Punic ʾlp ‘ox’; cf. Akkadian alpu(m) ‘bull, ox; cattle; beef’, Ugaritic ảlp ‘bull, ox; cattle; yearling calf, young cattle’, Biblical Hebrew ʾelep̄ ‘cattle, head of cattle’ etc. Phonetically, ἄλφα ‘bull, ox’ is not an exact Phonician word (we would expect *αλφ or *αλεφ), but only the Greek letter name ἄλφα that, ultimately, goes back to the Semitic word for ‘ox’. Cf. ἄλφα 1.
📖 Data: CAD: A.1, 364-372; CDA: 13; DCH: I, 299; DNWSI: 64; DUL: 58f.; HALOT: 59; PhPD: 55.