Or perhaps something like this?! This village is < 10km from the site of Ugarit.

Toponyms of Latakia - Toponym 12 QISMĪN Village 20km northeast of Latakia city. Perhaps it's the absolute state m. pl. of Aramaic qismā ('chip of wood')? It's a quite green region.

Toponyms of Latakia - Toponym 11 KIRSĀNA Village in northern Latakia countryside, 10km from the city. Sounds pretty Aramaic. There seems to be a perfect match for the phonetic form: karsān ('abdominal') [a>i would be regular in local Arabic]. Whether this is really the origin: I don't know, but...

Toponyms of Latakia - Toponym 10 L-MAĠRĪṬ Small agricultural village in northern Latakia countryside. Has no transparent meaning in local Arabic. It would be nice if it was related to the ancient place name Maġrīt, but I realize that sounds too good to be true (for example, the ġ is preserved).

Toponyms of Latakia - Toponym 9 L-QANJRA Village ~6km from Latakia city and ~5km from the site of Ugarit. The name might be Arabic but I wouldn't assume that solely because of the definite article. It has no transparent meaning in local Arabic.

Toponyms of Latakia - Toponym 8 JINNĀTA Village 12km from Latakia city. The same name exists e.g. in Lebanon. Seems it has a fairly clear-cut Aramaic origin: plural of ga/innəṯā ('garden').

Toponyms of Latakia - Toponym 7 MŠĒRFIT IS-SĀMŪK Arabic name, but with a twist: sāmūk ('column') is likely from the Aramaic root √smk ('to support'), this word is known in the Arabic dialect (though no longer used by the current generation).

שנה טובה ומתוקה

Toponyms of Latakia - Toponym 6 DIMSARXO Previously a village, now almost connected to Latakia city. About 10km from the village SITMARXO with its conspicuously similar name. What if it's just a metathesized form of it?! Or alternatively, maybe they both come from the same language?

Toponyms of Latakia - Toponym 5 BISNĀDA Village until a few decades ago, now part of Latakia city. Sounds Aramaic, but assuming b < *bayt there doesn't seem to be an obvious Aramaic word corresponding to snāda.

For some regions, it seems like toponyms might be the only way to prove that Aramaic was likely actually spoken there? Let's take the region of Latakia which I'm interested in. The alternatives would be: 1) Hard written evidence (inscriptions, manuscripts): honestly I'm not aware of any at all,...

Toponyms of Latakia - Toponym 4 SITMARXO Village located 9km from Latakia city. Sounds to me like an old name that is neither Arabic nor Aramaic. The final O might be some sort of suffix because it is found in names of many other villages.

Toponyms of Latakia - Toponym 3 BAKSA Village about 8km from Latakia city. Even though it's a simple name, it neither sounds Arabic nor seems to me to have a clear Aramaic etymology (even if the B is somehow from bayt, as in Aramaic names of other villages).

Toponyms of Latakia - Toponym 2 SQŪBĪN Used to be a village, now a large suburb on the outskirts of the city of Latakia. The -īn looks like the Aramaic m. pl. absolute state ending, which is found in many other place names. I don't know the origin, it reminds me of SAQBA in Damascus countryside.

Toponyms of Latakia - Day 1 SINŽWĀN Historically a village, now a suburb immediately next to the city of Latakia. The origin is obscure to me. There seems to be a Christian Cypriot figure attested in medieval Arabic as سرجوان, perhaps a connection is not unthinkable?

I was told that Ṭuroyo speakers have a personal name Laħdo, which reminded me of the Maronite Lebanese surname Laħħūd (which a former Lebanese president bears). The Aramaic meanings of this root I found are about solitariness and uniqueness, but Wikipedia claims that this root could also...

If the Ghassanids were Byzantine clients, why didn't they join the state church and instead were more similar to Syriac churches? Or is my understanding wrong?

Why did ذكر الإله become a characteristic formula of Christian Old Arabic inscriptions? Is it a calque of a common Christian expression that I don't know about?

On the eve of the collapse of Byzantine rule over the Levant in the 1st half of the 7th century, what share of Arabic-speakers who already lived in the Levant turned against the Byzantines and joined or supported the invading southern Arab army, and what share defended the Byzantines?

The 512 CE Zabad inscription is very northern. Were the Arabic-speaking Christians who contributed/caused the Paleo-Arabic part living in the region, or were they there for the construction project or for other purposes?

What is the TL;DR on the relationship of the Ein Ovdat Old Arabic inscription to Classical Arabic poetry meters? I seriously doubt those lines really adhered to the very same version of a CA meter, but is it now accepted that they reflected a poetic meter at all?

Quite confusing that there seems to have been two simultaneous kings of the Ghassanids and the Lakhmids who shared the same name (al-nuʕmān ibn al-munðir).

Surprised to see that no counterpart of Hebrew תְּאֵנָה is attested in Ugaritic. Just a sad accident or what? Figs are quite common and tasty in the modern-day region around Ugarit.

Just for fun, I asked ChatGPT to estimate the percentage of Arabic speakers in 526 CE within the present-day borders of each of Syria, Lebanon, Jordan, and Israel/Palestine, counting populations that may not have been permanently settled inside those borders. It gave:

My favorite resource for learning Modern Hebrew is the discontinued newspaper שער למתחיל which has fully vocalized texts (an archive can be found on ae.lms.education.gov.il/course/view....). There was a similar newspaper that appeared later, I "won" a couple free issues because...

I've noticed that in my person use of the genitive particle tabaʕ, I always require it to be preceeded by əl if it's attached to a pronominal suffix. E.g., I say 'my house' as əl-bēt ət-tabaʕ-e. I'm really not sure if this is my idiosyncratic habit or something I picked up from the local dialect,...

Kind of sad that I had never heard of this old Arabic inscription from the 6th-century southern Syria, but it's quite cool: it apparently mentions a concrete year that corresponds to 528 CE and also a concrete Ghassanid kingالحارث الملك. What's the deal with the <h> of أنه?

What makes the Hebrew word for 'daughter' show an /i/ vowel with pronominal suffixes? Standalone בַּת, but 'my daughter' is בִּתִּי. Is it a retention of the original vowel of *bint?

The Maltese word for 'heart' qalb is apparently feminine. Most commonly (always?), it is masculine in both literary and vernacular Arabic, so looks like Maltese flipped the gender.

I usually have my doubts about the accuracy of Wikipedia maps like this one, but regardless: what is the best educated guess on the language breakdown in the region shown, in the 6th century CE?