Barack Hussein Obama - what's in a name?

[housewolf]

Juan Cole of Informed Comment lays it all out for us:

Wednesday, February 27, 2008
Barack Hussein Obama, Omar Bradley, Benjamin Franklin and other Semitically Named American Heroes
...

I want to say something about Barack Hussein Obama's name. It is a name to be proud of. It is an American name. It is a blessed name. It is a heroic name, as heroic and American in its own way as the name of General Omar Nelson Bradley or the name of Benjamin Franklin. And denigrating that name is a form of racial and religious bigotry of the most vile and debased sort. It is a prejudice against names deriving from Semitic languages!

...
Barack and Hussein are Semitic words. Americans have been named with Semitic names since the founding of the Republic. Fourteen of our 43 presidents have had Semitic names (see below). And, American English contains many Arabic-derived words that we use every day and without which we would be much impoverished. America is a world civilization with a world heritage, something Cunninghamism will never understand.

Barack is a Semitic word meaning "to bless" as a verb or "blessing" as a noun. In its Hebrew form, barak, it is found all through the Bible. It first occurs in Genesis 1:22: "And God blessed (ḇāreḵə ) them, saying, Be fruitful, and multiply, and fill the waters in the seas, and let fowl multiply in the earth."

Here is a list of how many times barak appears in each book of the Bible.

Now let us take the name "Hussein." It is from the Semitic word, hasan, meaning "good" or "handsome." Husayn is the diminutive, affectionate form.

Barack Obama's middle name is in honor of his grandfather, Hussein, a secular resident of Nairobi. Americans may think of Saddam Hussein when they hear the name, but that is like thinking of Stalin when you hear the name Joseph. There have been lots of Husseins in history, from the grandson of the Prophet Muhammad, a hero who touched the historian Gibbon, to King Hussein of Jordan, one of America's most steadfast allies in the 20th century. The author of the beloved American novel, The Kite Runner, is Khaled Hosseini.

But in Obama's case, it is just a reference to his grandfather.

...
So, anyway, Obama's first two names mean "Blessing, the Good." If we are lucky enough to get him for president, we can only hope that his names are prophetic for us.

more...
http://www.juancole.com/2008/02/barack-hussein-obama-omar-bradley.html



So take THAT, right wing slanderes!

[Bicoastal]

1. It'd break the pattern, that's all I can say.

For a nation of immigrants, we can't seem to stay away from Presidents with Anglo-Saxon monkiers. (Johnson, Nixon, Ford, Carter, Reagan, Bush, etc.)

[Yupster]

23. Not the first with a biblical name though

Warren Gamaleal Harding is a favorite of mine.

Now where Milhouse came from is a mystery though. Family maiden name perhaps.

[Lint Head]

2. General Omar Bradley was name after a Muslim warrior.

:dem:

[Bicoastal]

3. Named Bradley?

:P

[housewolf]

8. Not the Bradley part

the Omar part

From the article:
Which brings me to Omar Bradley. Omar is an alternative spelling of Umar, i.e. Umar ibn al-Khattab, the second caliph of Sunni Islam. Presumably General Bradley was named for the poet Omar Khayyam, who bore the caliph's name. Omar Khayyam's Rubaiyat, in the "translation" of Edward FitzGerald, became enormously popular in Victorian America.

Gen. Omar Bradley, who bore a Semitic, Muslim first name, and shared it with the second Caliph of Sunni Islam, was the hero of D-Day and Normandy, of the Battle of the Bulge and the Ruhr.

[mmonk]

25. .

:rofl:

[FrenchieCat]

4. K & R

[NightWatcher]

5. Isnt his name actually Barack Hussein Obama, Jr.? wouldnt that mean that all of the "name games" are

nonsense. He is named by his father who left when he was 2.

[housewolf]

7. I've never seen a "Jr." suffix attached to his name

so I guess I don't know the answer to your question!

:shrug:

[NightWatcher]

11. from his site

http://www.barackobama.com/learn/meet_barack.php

Meet Barack
Early Years
Barack Obama was born in Hawaii on August 4th, 1961. His father, Barack Obama Sr., was born and raised in a small village in Kenya, where he grew up herding goats with his own father, who was a domestic servant to the British.

[housewolf]

13. You're right then

I hadn't seen that before.

[AnnieBW]

19. I think you lose the Jr.

when your father dies.

[tritsofme]

21. It says Jr on my birth cert and driver's license.

And my father has been gone for many years now.

The Junior however is not always formalized, and doesn't have to be.

[housewolf]

22. I don't know...

wouldn't you have to go through a legal name-change process?

[Pirate Smile]

9. Yes. Really, who actually gets to pick their name?

I don't like my middle name but I haven't change it, geez, we live with this kind of crap.

Does anyone remember his Mom's first name? I'm sure if he bitched about his name then she had her own stories to tell him about getting a weird name.

[Sparkly]

6. This is excellent!!

I've been hoping his campaign -- or somebody -- would make such a statement!

[Scurrilous]

10. Thanks for posting this!

K & R :thumbsup:

[Rosa Luxemburg]

12. Blessed Barack!

[peoli]

14. ty!

[demo dutch]

15. Like it or not!, just realize that the GOP will have a field day with the name

[AnnieBW]

20. Just bring up King Hussein

that will shut them up.

[cascadiance]

16. Hey, my middle initial is W too! Go ahead and assassinate me for it too!

Of course my Mom didn't know that it would become such an evil initial later on either close to 50 years ago. So let's let it go folks!

I wonder if Kate Bush has any desire to change her name too!

[GoldieAZ49]

17. There are connotations to names, negative and positive

But no one complains about the positive ones.

My grandfathers first name was Adolph, he was born in 1912. He lived through WWII and died in 2005.

He spent just over a year, at the end of his life in a Jewish assisted living/nursing home.

Every new person he met there, from aides, to Dr.'s to PT's he ALWAYS introduced himself as 'Adolph, that's with a ph.'

He did not want to be associated with the "other" Adolf.


It was an important distinction for his generation.

[housewolf]

18. Good point

Tnanks!

[caseycoon]

24. K&R Thanks for posting this! n/t

[Zorra]

26. That's nice, but it will not convince ignorant people to vote for Obama. n/t