Etymology

Unknown. Cabolov compares with Arabic ذُرِّيَّة ‎(ḏurriyya, “progeny”), ذَرارِي ‎(ḏarārī, “children”), which seems possible, though not fully convincing since the Arabic words are of moderate frequence and the stem ḏarr- (zarr-) would have to be an independent backformation in Kurdish. Compare, however, the Kurdish borrowing zurryet ‎(“progeny”) from ذُرِّيَّة ‎(ḏurriyya). Other possibilities include a (vague) derivation from the stem of zan ‎(“to bear; to be born”), from Proto-Indo-European *ǵenh₁-.