"Barack"

[Joel S. Berson]

Remember the common opening for Hebrew prayers, "Baruch Atah Adonai
Eloheinu Melech ha'olam" -- which can, some say, be translated as
"Blessed art thou, Adonai our God, ruler of the universe".  Others
say otherwise.

Joel

At 8/29/2008 08:01 AM, Benjamin Zimmer wrote:
>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

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