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Article
#2
Hebrew Names to English Words
In this column I will be
piecing together the myriad miracles of Edenspeak, the primordial
Mother Tongue best seen in Biblical Hebrew. Before proving to you
that Adam gave us animal names (Genesis 2:20) that still offer us
profound meanings, before demonstrating Hebrew's unique root
system that links synonyms and antonyms, and before tracing how
the neurological phenomenon at Babel (Genesis 11) made Hebrew the
missing link between the world's words, let us begin with the
more conservative thesis that scores of English words not
credited to Hebrew are unacknowledged borrowings from the mildly
corrupted Hebrew of bible readers.
Let us recall that The
Good Book was often the only book, and that bible reading was a
dominant form of entertainment for many centuries of literate
gentiles since the Greek translation. Transliterated Biblical
Hebrew names were widely adopted, and although Hebrew alluded all
but a few scholars the language was universally respected.
Even
in the New World, the Continental Congress nearly voted in Hebrew
as the official language of Americans, who saw themselves as the
new Israelites in a Promised Land. More impressive than the
Hebrew motto of Yale College is the title of Harvard College's
first dissertation: Hebrew Is the Mother Tongue. When Noah
Webster's original dictionary traced many English words beyond
German, French, Latin and Greek to their "Shemitic"
origin, no one raised an eyebrow. Every learned person knew that
Hebrew was the Mother Tongue.
But on the Continent, late
Nineteenth Century German scholars were inventing modern
linguistics. Their racist ideas about the supremacy of Aryan
tongues created barbed wire language barriers and even hung
Mother Hebrew out on a limb of the language tree called West
Semitic. There was soon so much antipathy towards Hebrew elements
of etymology, that linguists were loath to admit that anything
beyond a dozen words like Amen, Cherub, Hallelujah and Jubilee
might be influenced by the Hebrew. Before I convince some of you
skeptics that words like Skeptic (Greek), Samurai (Japanese) and
Taboo (Polynesian) are from Hebrew S[H]aKaP[H] (observe),
S[H]oMeR (guardian) and ToAIB[H]ah (dreadful sin), let me prove
to you how reluctant our dictionaries are to acknowledge simple
Hebrew name borrowings which were mildly corrupted by bible
readers.
The most famous curse-monger in history is
Balaam of Numbers 22-24. Correctly pronounced Bil-LuM in Hebrew,
this character who became synonymous with cursing to millennia of
bible readers is the unacknowledged source of the word BLAME.
BLAME meant to curse (as in,"I hurt my blamed foot!"),
yet the best the dictionaries can come up with is Greek
blasphemein (to profane).
The Anglicized Goliath comes
from Hebrew GoLioS (I Samuel 17:4), which the Greeks rendered
Kolios (just as they turned the GaMaL into a camel).>From the
Greek version of Goliath, therefore, comes COLOSSUS, COLOSSEUM
and all things COLOSSAL. Another giant oversight in our
etymologies involves Og, the giant king of Bashan (Numbers
21:33). The language historians suppose that a French writer (d.
1703) coined the terms for the OGRE and his lovely OGRESS.
Let's take the acknowledged Hebrew borrowing AMEN for
another example. In your dictionary the word after Amen is
AMENABLE. Amen is the common Hebrew refrain of belief,
affirmation, and verified acceptability. That is the essence of
AMENABLE, not the offered Latin etymon minari (to threaten). Will
Hebrew need an "Amen corner" of supporters to knock out
these incorrect cover-ups from our reference books?
Similarly,
the Jubilee year (Lev. 25: 8-17) is signalled by the blowing of
the YoBHaiL or JoB[H]aiL (ram's horn) by the JUBILANT Israelites.
Latin jubilare (to exult, raise a shout of joy) is clearly an
echo of the older culture's custom. In fact, there are so few "J"
words in Latin, that the historic ties between judex (English
Judge) and Judaea (home of law and famous judges) ought to be
clear.
GONORRHEA (its spelling influenced by the attempt
to give it a Greek source) ought to be linked to Gomorrah, just
as surely as SODOMY is traced to the twin city of Sodom (Genesis
19:24). If this famously salty area gave us another term, it
would be SODIUM. Latin soda (foundation, just like Hebrew
[Ye]SoD) has nothing to do with sodium. Speaking of place names,
a JORDAN (chamber pot) and a SCAM should come from the biblical
Jordan and Shechem, while the most relevant and covered up
English word from a Hebrew place name has to be BABBLE. The
Oxford English Dictionary is so troubled by a biblical source for
BABBLE (Babel), that it warns readers that "no direct
connection with Babel can be traced" and declares the term
to be of "unknown origin."
Check the given
etymologies, for what they're worth, but [HI]JACK, JINX, JUDGE,
JOVIAL, and VULCAN are really from the bible's Jacob, Jonah,
Judah, Jehovah and [Tu]val-Cain (Gen. 4:22).
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