"Barack " is a Hebrew Old Testament name.

[old mark]

The name is derived from "Barak", an Israeli General in the Old Testament, and a name still used by Hebrew speakers today.
Translates as "Lightning".
There is an Artabic version of the name as well, as Youseff is to Joseph and Ibrahim is to Abraham, which is Barack, but it is first a Hebrew word taken as a Hebrew biblical name.

I guess the right religious folks only read the parts of the bible they agree with.

mark

[Freddie Stubbs]

1. Which book, chapter, and verse?

:shrug:

[atreides1]

2. The Book of Judges

Barak (Hebrew: בָּרָק‎, "Lightning"), the son of Abinoam from Kedesh in Naphtali, was a military general in the Book of Judges in the Bible. He was the commander of the army of Deborah, the prophetess and heroine of the Hebrew Bible. Barak and Deborah are credited with defeating the Canaanite armies led by Sisera, who for twenty years had oppressed the Israelites.


Chapter and verse: Deborah and Barak (4:1-5:31)

[Freddie Stubbs]

7. Ahh..different spelling

[dixiegrrrrl]

13. See ? This is why I love DU.

Ask a question, someone is sure to know the answer.

That was really informative, atreides1.
Thanks !:)


.

[bdamomma]

17. interesting

[Uncle Joe]

20. How about the name Freddie is that in the Bible?

Maybe it's just spelled different?

[TechBear_Seattle]

4. From the Revised Standard Version

Now Deb'orah, a prophetess, the wife of Lapp'idoth, was judging Israel at that time. She used to sit under the palm of Deb'orah between Ramah and Bethel in the hill country of E'phraim; and the people of Israel came up to her for judgment.

She sent and summoned Barak the son of Abin'o-am from Kedesh in Naph'tali, and said to him, "The LORD, the God of Israel, commands you, 'Go, gather your men at Mount Tabor, taking ten thousand from the tribe of Naph'tali and the tribe of Zeb'ulun. And I will draw out Sis'era, the general of Jabin's army, to meet you by the river Kishon with his chariots and his troops; and I will give him into your hand.'"

Judges 4:4-7

After the battle, Deborah and Barak sang together in what is known in the church as "The Canticle of Deborah", Judges 5. Barak is listed among the great generals of Israel in I Samuel 12:11 and in Hebrews 11:32.

Revised Standard Version

[lynnertic]

8. Sounds like Debbie had a cush job, sitting on a tuffet beneath palm trees and

dispensing judgement

[TechBear_Seattle]

10. Not really

The time of judges was an interesting one in the pre-kingdom area of what would become Israel and Judah. Basically, judges were prophets and lorekeepers, relying on memory to preserve a mostly oral tradition of law and religious beliefs and practices. As work, it would have been tough and very demanding -- imagine if you spent your day trying to deal with feuding neighbors who came to you every other day to claim, "He move the marker stones to make his land bigger!" and "He lets his ewes mix with my flock so my prize ram can service them! I demand he give me the offspring!"

Add to that the fact that Deborah is the only woman known to have held the position of judge. All of the many Semitic people were extremely patriarchal; a woman with that kind of power would have had to fight tooth and nail to retain it.

I don't think she had a very cushy job.

[lurky]

3. Don't forget Ehud Barak, PM of Israel.

I guess it can be a surname, too.

[Dogtown]

15. lurky, when the State of Israel was re-established

many of it's new citizens were refugees from Eastern european countries and Russia. Often family names were changed to leave the old identities with the heritage of pogrom and holocaust behind and reflect their new Israeli identities.

It's akin to the rejection of "slave names" and the adoption of africanized names by American blacks.


"Barak" has been adopted as both surname and given name by Israelis. It has also been adopted by American blacks with Christian convictions as a "biblical" name.

[lurky]

23. Interesting, thanks!

:hi:

[IDemo]

5. Here is an excellent read for those interested:

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

[fascisthunter]

6. what a Bummer, Huh right wingers

[dynasaw]

9. Also

soietimes a variant of the more familiar Baruch.

[noel711]

11. Judges chapters 4 and 5

A woman Judge (the Only woman judge)
named Deborah was begged by Barack to accompany the
Hebrew troops into battle.

Read the story, its great,
and yes, it is a woman who defeats the opposing leader Sisera..

[Suji to Seoul]

12. Who cares? I'm voting for the person, not his damn name!

I'm so sick of this crap with the name.

Thanks alot, Man Hands Ann, you 5'9" sack of snot! You're the witch who gave us this crap!

[Dogtown]

18. I think it's a matter of interest, rather than a defense

It's a pretty cool name and I think the derivation is fascinating. No body that wasn't already voting for Drool and the Bimbo ever believed it was "Muslin". I don't believe we feel compelled to rebut the slurs, some of us just find the topic of names (clever or interesting names, that is) interesting.



+, it beats the hell out of names derived as lame puns...

[lonestarnot]

14. Is this another Gieco caveman commercial?

[The Straight Story]

16. Great...so now he is a jew and a muslim....that ought to freak out the freeps

:rofl:

[dixiegrrrrl]

19. Guess what McCain's name is?

John Sidney McCain III.

Yep.....tis true. Wiki says so.

[old mark]

21. Lets see "John"....

is another name derived from the Hebrew, Yochanan, meaning God is Gracious.
Sidney is from an English surname, and may mean "Wide Island".

Mark (from Latin "of Mars, the god of war", hence "warlike.")

[Uncle Joe]

24. Basically it's just Cain wearing a kilt. n/t

[SteelPenguin]

22. It's Semitic, not purely Hebrew

There are many arabic names and hebrew names that are exactly the same, extremely close, or related to each other, as you list. They weren't initially all hebrew names though that arabs adopted, they existed concurrently on both sides, and have the same semitic origins pre-hebrew/arab 'split'.

To say that Barack, or Youseff or Ibrahim are "first a hebrew word" is incorrect as they existed in simliar forms side by side with multiple semitic groups.

[old mark]

25. I stand corrected - thank you. nt.

[Igel]

26. Ah, somebody who believes the KJV was how God gave the OT to the Israelites.

You're in ... well ... company. After all, you seem to notice that "Barak" isn't 'barak' in Hebrew, but "baraq", and then proceed to assume that the English is the authoritative version of the name to use.

Let's assume 'brq' is the Hebrew root. Note the 'q'. It's not a 'k', except for people transliterating Hebrew names into a language that lacks a q/k distinction and where the people don't care about the distinction. In other words, it's an imperfect representation used when an accurate representation is unwanted or unneeded. One, the 'q', is (or was) uvular; the other's velar. Think of the difference between "Coke" and "coat" and how similar those are--they differ as much as 'barak' and 'baraq' do, by a single place of articulation in the same position in the word.

I'll not quibble with 'lightning' as the translation of 'brq'; it's immaterial.

Standard Arabic retains the distinction between k/q, however the dialects may deal with q (some have it > g, some to k, some to ?--a glottal stop). "Barak" is from an Arabic root 'brk' meaning 'bless'. There's a Jewish name that's cognate with it, and I'm guessing that *brk would have been Common Semitic. My kid's first pediatriacian bore the Hebrew equivalent, "Baruch". It means "blessed", as does "barak". "Barak" was taken over by a lot of E African languages when Arabic was the trade/slaver language and Islamicization was in full-swing there centuries ago.

"Baruch" is not Obama's first name. "Baruch Hussein Obama". Now *that's* multiethnic.

In other words, you should have Googled for a few seconds.