Mathmagic Land

[Wilmer Rivers]

Torsten Adair writes about "Donald Duck in Mathmagic Land":
>	I may be mistaken (actually, a book I read may be mistaken), but I
> thought Algebra was named after a middle-eastern mathematician, not after a
> word.
No, almost all the exotic-sounding words in the English language that
have the prefix "al" come from Arabic nouns rather then proper names.
"Al" is the definite article in Arabic.  Science has lots of these
words, such as Al-cohol, Al-chemy, Al-dehyde, Al-falfa, Al-gorithm,
Al-idade (that's a surveying instrument), Al-kali, etc.  As for
algebra, that means "the reunion of broken parts".

Wilmer Rivers