Is it possible for two Semitic (e.g. Arabic, Hebrew) words with the same triliteral root to have different origins?

Question

Learning Arabic, I see some examples of triliteral roots from which words with apparently different meanings are derived. Example:

ف ط ر (f-ṭ-r)

• "to break apart or tear": فَطَرَ • (faṭara) (maybe cognate with Hebrew פתר (f-t-r) "to solve"?)
• "to create": same word, فَطَرَ

س م و (s-m-w)

• "heaven, sky, firmament": سَمَاء‎ (samāʾ) (cognate with Hebrew שָׁמַיִם, "heaven, sky" or "God"?)
• "name": اِسْم‎ (ism)

These examples make me curious: "break apart" seems unrelated to "create", and "heaven" seems unrelated to "name".

In Semitic languages like Arabic and Hebrew, is it always the case that two words with the same triliteral root are etymologically related? Or for example is it possible that two words with different origins in an older language both got mapped to the same triliteral root? And are there any tricks for figuring out when this has happened?

Answer 1

Your cited examples do not involve the same roots in Hebrew and Arabic, they involve similar roots: [t] is not the same as [ṭ] and [f] is not the same as [p]. Semitic šim- "name" appears in Arabic as ism- and in Hebrew as šem: these have the same historical origin, but the synchronic roots are not the same, they are just similar. "Sky" which is from Semitic šamāy is indeed similar to šim (though they mean different things, and don't have the same historical origin). If you change your standard of comparison from "same" to similar, that would be a case of two similar roots (of daughter languages) that come from different earlier roots. Then you can find similar roots with different meanings in one language (Arabic qalb "heart" and kalb "dog"); when you look only at contemporary surface form and overlook some differences, it's easier to find roots in one or more languages that are "the same", when their origins are quite different.

Proto-Semitic distinguished *ħ and *χ, *ʕ and *γ, which Hebrew neutralized to *ħ and *ʕ, so in principle two distinct roots in Semitic could get neutralized in Hebrew, and that is another source of similarity (or possibly identity) with different meaning. Semantic change is another way this can happen. Arabic ṭaḥana and Hebrew taḥán have a common Semitic root meaning "grind", but Hebrew has an added meaning "to talk incessantly"; Hebrew bar reflects multiple Semitic and non-Semitic roots meaning "weight" (from Greek), "bar" (from English), "wilderness" (Semitic), "son" (via Aramaic) and "grain" (dunno the source).