Names are interesting and educational. One of my co-workers is named Srividya. I thought that /sri/ sounded familiar: to wit, /sri lanka/, "divine island", but I didn't know what /vidya/ meant - sounds like "video" but Indian names are ancient, plus who still with their wits about them would name their kid "divine video"??
So I do what I do when I'm at wit's end: I ask. /Sri/ in this case means abundance, as in 'wealth', or 'a wealth of'. And she said /vidya/ means 'knowledge'.
A little googling gave me more info. Vidya is an epithet of Saraswati, a goddess of knowledge and daughter or consort of Brahma. Makes me think of Athena, the daughter of Zeus.
Now the cognates. PIE is *weid-, to know, whence Englist 'wit'. In Latin, it's videre, whence English 'vision'.
And now you know what I know about the word vidya.
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