Words I have learnt

I always learn some new vocabulary when I'm at LAGB. Sometimes from the language tutorial (every year there's an in-depth look at an unfamiliar language), sometimes just from examples in the papers. Last year, for instance, I learnt that Swahili for lion is simba, presumably where the lovable yet headstrong (and somewhat dim) character in The Lion King gets his name.

This year I learnt that Turkish for man is adam. It's also the same in Hebrew, I think, as the name of Adam (the Biblical one) is supposed to be from Hebrew. People seem to disagree over what it means though - it also means red, like the earth (which Adam was supposedly made from). However, this new word is not surprising, only mildly interesting.

I also learnt the Tundra Nenets word for bread, which is na'an. Tundra Nenets is a Samoyedic Uralic language spoken in Russia. We get the word naan from Urdu (or Persian, according to the OED), which is a whole lot different from Nenets. I don't think there's been a lot of contact between northern Russian peoples and Urdu speakers, so what the heck is going on here? Could it be just coincidence?