ܐܳܦܰܕܢܳܐ pdnʾ āppaḏnā palace
Derivative: ܐܵܦܲܕܢܵܝܵܐ ʾpdnyʾ āppaḏnāyā an official of the Palace. Reborrowing: ܐܝܹܘܵܢܵܐ ʾywnʾ ēwānā, ܐܝܘܢ ʾywn palace
ʾpdnʾ ← OP apadāna-; Parth. (Nisa) ʾpdn, ʾpdnk, ʾpdnky, ʾpdny, ʾbdny palace (Gignoux 1972, 45); ManParth. ʾpdn /appaδan/ palace and ʾfdn /āfδan/ id. (Durkin-Meisterernst 2004, 50 and 26 observes that, if the alternative form ʾbdn for ʾpdn is not a mistake, or a MP form, the transcription /appaδan/ may be wrong); Arm. LW aparan-kh house, palace (Bolognesi 1960, 40; Hübschmann AG 104, no. 47); ʾywn, ʾywnʾ ← NP ayvān palace, portico, open gallery (Steingass 134). — Talm. Aram. ʾpdnʾ (already in Daniel 11.45 hb ʾpdn) quoted by Telegdi 321, 24; Telegdi 218 classified this loanword among the pre-Sasanian ones ● ʾpdnʾ 1Par 15, 1; ER 121, 27; asd 13, 12; Jul 173, 26; IA 2, 138 v 608; IAB 1, 511, 3; JS in MS 1, 78, 88; JSB 3, 614, 15; 800, 7; 4, 419, 14; 420, 7; 874, 4; PsC 11, 12 and passim; ʾpdnyʾ ASI 3, 256, 17; ʾywn, ʾywnʾ AS 2, 321, 3; KwDW 346, 13 ◆ LS 40a; 14b; Nöldeke 1875, 433; PS Suppl. 30; Lagarde 1884, 1, 71; Widengren 1960, 30 f. and n. 109; Altheim – Stiehl 1963, 266 (Nisa 2, 2; 3, 1, with reference to Parth. *apaδānak)
The etyma of these two words (OP apadāna- and NP ayvān) are disputed. As for apadāna-, Henning (1944, 110 n. 1) claimed that the OP word for "palace" was actually appadāna-, in order to justify the corresponding Parthian form ʾpdn (given that OP apadāna- could appear in Parthian only as ʾbdʾn). According to Henning, the long bilabial consonant in appadāna- is also supported by the Biblical punctuation appeden (appadn-), by Syr. āpaḏnā and by Arab. fadan. As for the development from OP appadāna- to NP ayvān, Henning believed that the chronological sequence was: OP appadāna- > MP *āpaδan > *āβδan > *āδβan (with metathesis of -βδ- into -δβ-) > āyβan > āywan (the last form occurs in Manichaean Middle Persian, spelt ʾʾywn). From MP āywan NP ayvān developed through—in Henning's words—a "transposition of vowels", i.e. a quantitative metathesis. On the contrary, Kent (1953, 168) reads the OP word as apadāna-, a compound of prefix apa- + dāna-, to be compared with Skr. apadhā́- "concealment" and Gr. ἀποθήκη "storehouse". Kent agreed with Henning that in later Iranian the initial long vowel in āpa- is a development due to a secondary lengthening, but disagreed with him over a derivation from an initial OP appa-. In fact, according to Kent (1953, 45 § 130), in OP long consonants were never original but developed in word formation, by assimilation or juxtaposition: “All long consonants of earlier origin were shortened in pIr. [protoIranian], and long consonants of later origin were shortened in pIr. or in OP”. Lecoq (1997, 115 f.) has recently put forward a new etymon: the ambiguous Old Persian cuneiform spelling «a-p-d-n» should be read as āpadāna (and not as apadāna) and as a consequence the etymological meaning of this word should be "réservoir d'eau". According to Lecoq, OP āpadāna is nothing but the antecedent of NP ābdān cistern (Steingass 6). Lecoq leaves the last word to the archaeologists. If the etymon proposed by Lecoq is confirmed by the archaeologists, we will probably have to find a different etymological explanation for NP ayvān.