dunam (English)

Where does "dunam" come from?

The English land measurement 'dunam' was borrowed either through Hebrew 'dunam' or Arabic 'dūnum'[1]. These regional terms trace back to Ottoman Turkish 'dönüm'[5], formed from the base of the verb 'dönmek', meaning 'to turn'[1][2], which itself descends from Proto-Turkic '*tȫn-'[3][4]. Linguists consider the Ottoman term to be a loan translation of the Byzantine Greek land unit 'stremma', which literally means 'that which is turned'[1][5].

Open questions

The derivation of the Turkish term as a direct loan translation of Byzantine Greek 'stremma' is considered probable or presumed rather than definitively proven. [1] [5]
It is uncertain whether English borrowed the term directly from Hebrew or from Arabic. [1]
The ultimate ancestor of the underlying verb is the reconstructed Proto-Turkic root '*tȫn-'. [3] [4]

Full etymology tree

dunam (English), 'An Ottoman Turkish unit of surface area nominally equal to 1,600 square (Turkish) paces but actually varied at a provincial and local level according to land quality to accommodate its colloquial sense of the amount of land able to be plowed in a day, roughly equivalent to the Byzantine stremma or English acre.'
- borrowed דּוּנָם (dunam) (Hebrew)
  - borrowed دونوم (dönüm) (Ottoman Turkish)
    - calque στρέμμα (strémma) (Ancient Greek), 'that which is twisted, thread'
    - suffix دونمك (dönmek) (Ottoman Turkish), 'to turn, rotate, spin, gyrate, revolve, to move around an axis through itself'
      - inherited *tȫn- (Proto-Turkic)
    - suffix -üm (Ottoman Turkish)
- borrowed دونم (dūnum) (Arabic), 'dunam'
  - borrowed دونوم (dönüm) (Ottoman Turkish)
    - calque στρέμμα (strémma) (Ancient Greek), 'that which is twisted, thread'
    - suffix دونمك (dönmek) (Ottoman Turkish), 'to turn, rotate, spin, gyrate, revolve, to move around an axis through itself'
      - inherited *tȫn- (Proto-Turkic)
    - suffix -üm (Ottoman Turkish)

Ancestors

dönüm (Turkish)

Sources

Updated October 2026

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Etymology data from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0 · About Miraris