"Barack"

[Benjamin Zimmer]

On Fri, Aug 29, 2008 at 2:13 AM, Wilson Gray <hwgray at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Did anyone else notice that Obama himself has said that his name means
> "blessed" and not "lightning"? I don't know enough Semitic, uh,
> Semetic, to know whether he's be right or whether his father made a
> mistake.

No mistake. As I wrote on Aug. 20, in response to your "Hi!" post...

There are two different Semitic roots: "Barack" (as in Obama) and
"baruch" derive from B-R-K 'bless', while "Barak" (as in Ehud) and
"Barca" derive from B-R-Q 'lightning'. For more on this, see my two
Language Log posts:

http://itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl/languagelog/archives/004187.html
http://itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl/languagelog/archives/004196.html


--Ben Zimmer

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