Negus

thumb|Tekle Haymanot of Gojjam|Tekle Haymanot, negus of [[Gojjam]] Negus is the word for "king" in the Ethiopian Semitic languages and a title which was usually bestowed upon a regional ruler by the Negusa Nagast, or "King of Kings," in pre-1974 Ethiopia. The negus is referred to as Al-Najashi (النجاشي) in the Islamic tradition.

==Etymology== Sometime during the development of the Ethio-Semitic language family "m-l-k," the original triconsonantal root for king, was elevated to the generic word for "god" in the form of the broken plural "ʾämlak, ʔamlāk," as well as the word for angelic or divine when conjugated as melekot. It is possible the word related to Hebrew El (Elohim) or Allah (Ilah) was lost due to a word taboo much like YHWH. During this time the ancient semitic term for a ruler or lord, n-g-s (from Proto-Semitic √ngɬ 'to push, press for work'), began to mean "king." Along with that term, in the early Ethiopian state of D'mt the South Semitic term Mukarrib (priest-king), mostly associated with the Kingdom of Sheba, was in use and the Ge'ez malak (መለክ) remained in throne names into the Gondarine period. The universal existence of a semantic shift in n-g-s across the Ethio-Semitic languages is evidence that it doesn't comprise separate branches of the Semitic language family.