I have read the restrained reply Fr Peter Serracino Inglott gave Miriam Vincenti in The Sunday Times (February 8) with a sense of shared disappointment and, indirectly, with a sense of déjà vu. Ms Vincenti had put this question to the Professor: "Which omission do you regret most in the way we are living the Pauline Year?" The reply: "The failure to restore San Pawl Milqi in the manner it deserves."

A few months back I had tried to stir up some new interest in the church lying in what was known earlier as Binchichir. I pointed out that the name 'Milqi' should be 'mirqi', meaning "the healer who cures with spells", obviously referring to the image of St Paul the healer on the altar of the chapel.

Rather than eliciting some serious reactions from responsible linguists, there followed complete silence, except for someone who tried to refer me to one of the fabrications still featuring in Maltese linguistic orthodoxy.

The cause of the error perpetuated in the national historiography was pointed out by Anthony T. Luttrell over 30 years ago in his supposedly well-known contribution to Melita Historica, 7 (1977) 2 (105-132), titled 'Girolamo Manduca and Gian Francesco Abela: Tradition and invention in Maltese Historiography'.

I was so peeved by the presumptuous reply appearing, not in the columns of The Sunday Times, where my missive was carried, but in the paper's blog (and not in English as was natural in an English language paper, but in Maltese), that I did not care to answer.

Now that the learned professor has brought up the subject again, I find myself obliged to refer that bloke (I mean blogger) to Vassalli's Lexicon where it is amply pointed out: "milqi pro mirqi". Vassalli too was aware of the fabrications Luttrell was to berate in his lengthy but highly enlightening article.

I will go one further and refer the same blogger to Corriente, F. (1991): El lëxico árabe estándar y andalusí del 'Glossario de Leiden' where the acclaimed Arabist gives 'murqi' as "charmed, cured with spells". Does it take all that much to find out that murqi in Andalusi Arabic is mirqi in Maltese when we have so many past participles acting as adjectives following that pattern?

But the blogger in question preferred to rely on the conclusions of philologists who were in turn relying on conjectures circulated by foreign lexicographers with no scientific basis backing their opinion.

Incidentally, Corriente himself warns that grammarians, when hard pressed or hopelessly mystified, are apt to create anecdotes (which he terms as forgeries) on which they base etymons in order to satisfy their search of an explanation within the narrow limits of Classical Arabic. (see Corriente, F, 'South Arabian features in Andalusí Arabic' in Studia linguistica et orientalia memoriae Haim Blanc dedicata, p. 95).

Had any serious linguist joined the debate I was deliberately provoking, people's interest would have been piqued regarding the subject the learned professor was expecting to see the authorities setting their sights upon.