I understand your point, but not why you are surprised. If a non-Arabic speaker hears this place referred to as "sahara", why wouldn't other languages adopt it

I understand your point, but not why you are surprised. If a non-Arabic speaker hears this place referred to as "sahara", why wouldn't other languages adopt it as "Sahara"? My adjacent point is that this is very common: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_tautological_place_names?wprov=sfla1 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_tautological_place_nam...