English fellow vs Arabic fellah

Solution 1:

No.

From Etymonline:

fellah (n.) "Egyptian peasant," 1743, from Arabic fallah "plowman," from falaha "to plow, till (the soil)."

&

fellow (n.) "companion, comrade," c. 1200, from Old English feolaga "partner, one who shares with another," from Old Norse felagi, from fe "money" (see fee) + lag, from a verbal base denoting "lay" (see lay (v.)). The root sense is of fellow is "one who puts down money with another in a joint venture."

"Plow man" and "joint investor" are different enough that they aren't related linguistically.

Solution 2:

The definitive criterion for determining that a word is derived from another is not similarity, but the presence of systematic sound changes. Are there more examples of words that have the characteristics of fellah that would result in words with the characteristics of fellow? For example, are there more Arabic words ending in -ah that would result in English words ending in -ow?

And there's another issue: how could English have borrowed this word from Arabic? Fellow is attested as far back as Old English feolaga; were the Anglo-Saxons in contact with Arabic speakers often enough for them to have adopted such a basic word from the Arabic language?

Unless you can answer these questions satisfactorily, any etymologist will tell you that the answer is no.

Solution 3:

As a speaker of Arabic myself (North Africa), I can tell you these don't have the same definition.

In English, fellow means partner or collaborate and it is used in a neutral or positive way.

However, in Arabic, fellah means peasant and is often used as an insult (like the word peasant itself in today's English) for poor or uneducated people. It has a neutral or negative meaning.

Both words are old, with different connotations and from different linguistic origins. There's no real chance they're related. They just sound similar.

It's just like draw in English and draps (which means sheets) in French. Same pronunciation, different meaning and origin.