The root of the word has many meanings in Semitic languages including desert, nomad, merchant, and comprehensible with all of these having varying degrees of relevance to the emergence of the name.
[citation needed] The plurality of meanings results partly from the assimilation of the proto-Semitic غ ghayin with ع ʿayin in some languages.
rather than عرب ʿarob; however, in Ugaritic and Sayhadic,[1] languages which normally preserve proto-Semitic ghayin, this root is found with ʿayin adding to the confusion.
The term mâtu arbâi describing Gindibu is found in Assyrian texts and is translated as of Arab land.
The presence of Proto-Arabic names amongst those qualified by the terms arguably justifies the translation "Arab" although it is not certain if they all in fact represent the same group.
They may plausibly be borrowings from Aramaic or Canaanite of words derived from either the proto-Semitic root ġ-r-b or ʿ-r-b.
It is in the case of the Assyrian forms that a possible derivation from ġ-r-b ("west") is most plausible, referring to people or land lying west of Assyria in a similar vein to the later Greek use of the term Saracen meaning in Arabic "Easterners", šarqiyyūn for people living in the east.
The first written reference to Arabs was by the Assyrian King Sennacherib, 800 B.C., in which he tells of conquering the "ma'rabayeh" (Westerners).
In the Hebrew Bible the latter feminine form is used exclusively for the Aravah, a region associated with the Nabateans, who spoke Arabic.
The New Revised Standard Version of the Bible uses instead the literal translation "desert plain" for the verse in Isaiah.
The medieval writer Ibn an-Nadim, in Kitab al-Fihrist, derived the word "Arab" from a Syriac pun by Abraham on the same root: in his account, Abraham addresses Ishmael and calls him uʿrub, from Syriac ʿrob, "mingle".
This is in context of a listing of King Solomon's great wealth, of which some came from his apparent vassals and lesser potents.
2 Chronicles 17:11 mentions a people called Arvi'im who brought Jehoshaphat tribute of rams and he-goats.