# Hussein and Barack: Is there a Hebrew equivalent?



## bootsykowan

I understood immediately the word Barack.  But I've not been able to find a Hebrew equivalent to Hussein.


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## Clara_

According to Wikipedia, it is *חוסיין
*Barack Hussein Obama Jr would be ברק חוסיין אובאמה הבן.

Source: http://he.wikipedia.org/wiki/ברק_אובאמה 
http://he.wikipedia.org/wiki/ברק_אובאמהIf If you are looking for a translation (and not transliteration), I do not know*.
*


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## bootsykowan

Clara_ said:


> According to Wikipedia, it is *חוסיין*
> Barack Hussein Obama Jr would be ברק חוסיין אובאמה הבן.
> 
> Source:
> If you are looking for a translation (and not transliteration), I do not know*.*


======================
It's Baruch in Hebrew, it's Barack in Arabic. Just like it's Salaam in Arabic and Shalom in Hebrew. Blessed and Peace. Hussein mean handsome in Arabic. Is there a similar sounding Hebrew word that might not translate exactly "handsome" but something that would have the same sort of roots. Another way of asking is: HSN is a root, is it in Hebrew? It could be any characters that have these 3 type characters. S(h)LM and BRK(h) Root words.

Arabic and Hebrew, as far as I can see, have similar roots. Just different characters for writing. It's my theory that Hebrew equivalents can help with original understanding of old Arabic. It's like Italian and Spanish.


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## בעל-חלומות

חסון means strong, but it sounds to me more like a surname than a private name.


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## bootsykowan

בעל-חלומות said:


> חסון means strong, but it sounds to me more like a surname than a private name.


=====================================
TNX, it did help. Just this moment I realized I have Davidson's THE ANALYTICAL AND CHALDEE LEXICON. I'm terribly disorganized but I found it in the Hebrew/Jewish stack. I used your suggested spelling and found the root khet-samekh-noon and indeed it means strong. It's Syr. and Chald. Your spelling it says occurs in Psalm 89.9. (Page 269, Lexicon) I tried the Arabic forum and it simply says it's an immediate male ancestor's name. However in baby-naming sites it says it means good looking little boy in Arabic. It's for linguists to sort through, Blessed Handsome|Strong Obama.
I'm not being political. I use politics to suggest Lifelong Learning topics for me to enjoy.


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## cfu507

בעל-חלומות said:


> חסון means strong, but it sounds to me more like a surname than a private name.


 
חסון (Hason) זה שם משפחה. זוכר את מר חסון מהסרט "גבעת חלפון אינה עונה"?

Anyway, the name Hussein would be חוסיין and it's an Arabic name.


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## cfu507

bootsykowan said:


> ======================
> It's Baruch in Hebrew, it's Barack in Arabic. Just like it's Salaam in Arabic and Shalom in Hebrew. Blessed and Peace. Hussein mean handsome in Arabic. Is there a similar sounding Hebrew word that might not translate exactly "handsome" but something that would have the same sort of roots. Another way of asking is: HSN is a root, is it in Hebrew? It could be any characters that have these 3 type characters. S(h)LM and BRK(h) Root words.
> 
> Arabic and Hebrew, as far as I can see, have similar roots. Just different characters for writing. It's my theory that Hebrew equivalents can help with original understanding of old Arabic. It's like Italian and Spanish.


 
There is Barak in Hebrew too. I don't think that Barak has to be Baruch in Hebrew.


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## bootsykowan

cfu507 said:


> There is Barak in Hebrew too. I don't think that Barak has to be Baruch in Hebrew.


==================================
Just looked it up. Barak means lightning/glistening
So much more the reason to know Arabic along with Hebrew politically. Since the very active forum people use names in the USA all over the place to identify the person they will vote for. A rose by any other name smells as sweet. However, that's not true any more because it causes bad smells. 

This site has taught me a whole lot of how to research with my own tools before I jump to conclusions. Hayim Baltsam (Webster's New World Dictionary) sure is a shortcut. So now to respond to all those "hate" posters, I can say Blessed|Glistening Handsome|Strong Obama I consider this a Talmudic discussion. I feel like a very primitive RaMBaM
The advantage I have is the CERN HADRON and I exist in the Western Hemisphere.


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## kopo

Keep in mind that modern Israeli Hebrew has lost the phonetic distinction between two different letters, ק quf and כּ kaf.

_Barack_ seems to correspond to the root B-R-K (Hebrew בּ ר כ, Arabic ب ر ك), which means _bless_ in both languages.

The Hebrew word for lightning is _baraq_ ברק, which is written with a quf, and is therefore semantically unrelated. (The Arabic word for lightning is essentially the same - _barq_ برق).

Since Barack Obama's first name is not likely to be of direct Hebrew origin, and because it is rendered in Arabic as _barak _باراك (with a kaf) and not as _baraq_, it stands to reason that we're actually talking about _blessing_ and not _lightning_.

On the topic of _Hussein_, the Arabic letter sin س usually maps semantically (not phonetically) to Hebrew shin שׁ. The only known possible connection to the Arabic root ح س ن (ḥsn, to be beautiful or good) in Hebrew is the Hebrew word חֹשֶׁן ḥoshen, which was the name for the breastplate of the high priest in the Temples. (Even this cognate is pretty tenuous, since there are no other instances of this root in Hebrew.)


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## Abu Rashid

bootsykowan said:
			
		

> It's my theory that Hebrew equivalents can help with original understanding of old Arabic.



Actually it's usually the other way 'round. Arabic is used as a base to understand Hebrew, since Arabic still contains much of what Hebrew lost thousands of years ago.


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## MuttQuad

Former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak took that Hebrew family name for its meaning of "lightning." His birth name was Brog.

With Obama, inasmuch as the name was given using the Latin alphabet, at least according to his school records from Indonesia and what he presents instead of a birth certificate, it would be impossible to know whether his parents meant Barack in the sense of blessing or lightning.


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## Abu Rashid

Lightening in Arabic is barq, not barack.

The two really don't sound that alike.


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## Zeevdovtarnegolet

kopo said:


> Keep in mind that modern Israeli Hebrew has lost the phonetic distinction between two different letters, ק quf and כּ kaf.



This is not entirely true.  A lot of Israelis (Mizrachim) do have that distinction, also the one between Chet and Chaf.  You are speaking of the pronunciation of many Ashkenazi Israelis, but they now make up less than half of the population.


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