The following question was put to Dr Massey:
Q: A colleague
who goes by her birth-certificate name Sarah
recounts that she was accosted by a fellow who admonished her to identify as (that ill-omened
coinage) “Sara”, the initial
designation of Abraham’s wife, on the grounds that the -h conferred later was “honorific”. -- Now indeed the name
patriarch himself, originally Abram,
likewise later achieved an extension, honoris
causâ.
Question: Is it alphabetically the same h in both cases? And is there any sense in describing it (assuming they be the same) as an “honorific affix” (the way -ón in Spanish can be an augmentative affix), or is there nothing morphosemantically lofty about the names themselves, which merely happen to have been conferred for the purposes of honor?
Question: Is it alphabetically the same h in both cases? And is there any sense in describing it (assuming they be the same) as an “honorific affix” (the way -ón in Spanish can be an augmentative affix), or is there nothing morphosemantically lofty about the names themselves, which merely happen to have been conferred for the purposes of honor?
The good doctor replied by return of post:
A: The person who told her this was simply wrong across the
board. First off, the Matriarch's original name was not Sara, but Sarai. When
her name is changed to Sarah is is simply moving to the Hebrew version of her
original Aramaic name, both of which mean something like "princess."
I don't read the name changes as conferring honor at all. In the case of Abram --> Abraham, we have an actual semantic change, Exalted Father --> Father of a Multitude. In the case of Sarai--> Sarah, it might be similar to a man named Mohamed changing his name to Muhammad, i.e., making the name more purely Arabic.
The Hebrews seemed aware that, while they spoke their own distinct Semitic language, their origins had Aramaic swirling around. Deut 26:5, "My father was a wandering Aramean," referring to the Patriarchal age. NB also Gen 31:47, in which Laban, Jacob's uncle, calls a memorial stone by an Aramaic name, but Jacob gives it a Hebrew name.
The final h in feminine names and nouns in Hebrew is vocalic, not consonantal. It's equivalent to the taa' marbuta. As a result, it is added by convention in English transliteration, but unnecessary. Sara and Sarah are the same name, basically.
I don't read the name changes as conferring honor at all. In the case of Abram --> Abraham, we have an actual semantic change, Exalted Father --> Father of a Multitude. In the case of Sarai--> Sarah, it might be similar to a man named Mohamed changing his name to Muhammad, i.e., making the name more purely Arabic.
The Hebrews seemed aware that, while they spoke their own distinct Semitic language, their origins had Aramaic swirling around. Deut 26:5, "My father was a wandering Aramean," referring to the Patriarchal age. NB also Gen 31:47, in which Laban, Jacob's uncle, calls a memorial stone by an Aramaic name, but Jacob gives it a Hebrew name.
The final h in feminine names and nouns in Hebrew is vocalic, not consonantal. It's equivalent to the taa' marbuta. As a result, it is added by convention in English transliteration, but unnecessary. Sara and Sarah are the same name, basically.
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