The Wondering Jews

In a recent column  published by Tablet Magazine , Rabbi Avi Shafran purported to explain the "true story" of "how the yarmulke got its name." I'll excerpt the entirety of his discussion of the "yarmulke" term here. If you have ever heard and accepted the contention that the word [yarmulke] is a contraction of the Hebrew word for “fear/respect”– yir’ah , and the Aramaic word for “king”– malka –and that the word signifies the wearer’s fear of Heaven, well then, you have been had. Yarmulke ’s etymological pedigree is undeniably Polish, in which language the word  jarmułka  (with the stress, though, on the second syllable) still exists, and which originally referred to a skullcap worn by priests. (In Turkish,  yağmurluk  means a raincoat, which role a sufficiently expansive  kippa , one supposes, might fulfill in a pinch.) That's it. For those counting, that's 77 words. (96 if you count the side-comment referring to the Turkish word for...