"Barack"

[Benjamin Zimmer]

On Sun, Aug 31, 2008 at 3:15 AM, M M <mouna_rains at yahoo.com> wrote:
> 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.
>
> He's right.
>
>  If you recall, one of Israel's Prime Ministers was Ehud Barak....
>
>  In both the Semitic languages of Hebrew and Arabic, the word "Barak" means blessed or blessing....

One more time! The Semitic root B-R-K 'bless(ed)' gives us Arabic
"baraka, baraak" (as in Obama) and Hebrew "baruch", while the root
B-R-Q 'flash, shine; lightning' gives us Arabic "baraqa, barq" and
Hebrew "barak" (as in Ehud). The sound changes responsible for the
modern Hebrew forms are described here:

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


--Ben Zimmer

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