Essaouira

Essaouira (Arabic: الصويرة‎), formerly known as Mogador, is a city in the western Moroccan economic region of Marrakesh-Safi, on the Atlantic coast. The modern name means "the little rampart", a reference to the fortress walls that still enclose part of the city.

Name and etymology

The name of the city is usually spelled Essaouira in Latin script, and الصويرة in Arabic script. Both spellings represent its name in Moroccan Arabic, ṣ-Ṣwiṛa. This is the diminutive (with definite article) of the noun ṣuṛ which means "wall (as round a yard, city), rampart". The pronunciation with pharyngealized /ṣ/ and /ṛ/ is a typically Moroccan development. In Classical Arabic, the noun is sūr (with plain /s/ and /r/), diminutive suwayrah. Hence the spelling of the name in Arabic script according to the classical pronunciation is السويرة al-Suwayrah (with sīn not ṣād).

In Shilha, the Berber language spoken by a sizeable proportion of the city's inhabitants, it is called Taṣṣuṛt. This name is formed from the borrowed noun ṣṣuṛ "rampart" by the addition of the feminine gender affixes ta- and -t. In Shilha, the feminine derivation is often used to form diminutives.