9/26/24 East Nashville, TN
No one knows the actual root of any word. Some other language existed before Sanskrit and Sumerian. I’m interested in things that all people shared before they ever knew the other existed: the “Dog Star,” for instance, and all the so-called divine beings said to die for 3 days to be reborn, or the fact that every mother across the world says “Shhhh” to calm her baby, or the bizarrely similar symptoms of sleep paralysis across cultures and ages, or the “Erm” or “Um” people say when they can’t think of what to say next, and how similar “Um” is to “Amen” (Aum-men) and what’s said to be the primordial sound, “AUM”:
“Aaauuuu-Ooooooooo-Mmmmmmmm” (Um, I mean, um, rather, amen.)
I’m very fond of “blah blah blah,” and I’ve always been interested in the connection between so-called divinity and confounded speech, babble and Babel. I went down a rabbit hole today. I’m NOT proclaiming that all of these words are connected etymologically. I have no idea, but I find it all very fascinating.
There seems to be some philological connection between “divine beings,” language (particularly foreign) and new life.
Baba -a holy being or spiritual teacher (who needn’t speak)
Baba -onomatopoeia for the first sound babies make
Baba -honorific term across Asia & Africa
Baba -to mumble
Baba -father, grandfather, grandmother or wise elder
Bâbâ -mouth, river, outlet, orifice
Baba -empty boasting, promises or claims
Baba -to be injured in the mouth
Babaon -Cebuano, mouthy
Baqbaq -Polynesian, mouth
Biniba -oral, spoken, unwritten
Ibabâ -Rwanda-Rundi, to lower one’s voice
Blah blah -incoherent or boring speech (babble)
Bhle -to blow or swell
Bleh -to blow, bleat, cry
Blaðra -Norse, to talk nonsense
Blather -to talk nonsense, blether
Blasé -French, apathetic, jaded
Blâsen -Dutch, to blow, sound or brag
Blast -explosion, loud sound, verbal attack
Bālal -Hebrew, to jumble or confuse
Babalōną -Proto-Germanic, chatter
Bābilim -Akkadian, Gate of God
Babel -city & tower where God confounded speech
Babble -baby language, nonsense language
Babylon -ancient Mesopotamian city
Babylon -a confused medley of sounds, baby-lon
Baby -newborn who speaks confused medley of sounds
Baby -lover, sweetheart (blah blah)
Baby -labor of love, something one has invested in
Baban -barren, unable to make babies
Babushka -Russian old woman (baby-less)
Babar -baby drool
Burbur -Hebrew for noisy, clamorous
Barbar -Arabic for non-Arabic speaking, beastly people (derogatory)
Bar bar -onomatopoeia for how Africans sounded to Greeks (derogatory)
Barbar -non-Roman or non-Greek speaking people
Barbary -non-Christian
Barbary -coastal region of North Africa
Berber -exonym for North African people’s language (derogatory)
Berber -exonym for indigenous people of North Africa (derogatory?)
Berber -an actual city in Sudan (apparently not derogatory?)
Berbera -actual city in Somalia (who’s naming these places?)
Barbaros -foreigner, non-Greek speaking
Barbaricus -Latin, foreign, strange, outlandish
Barbarosa -person with red beard (foreign to Italy)
Barbarella -foreign woman
Barbarian -foreigner who speaks “unsophisticated” language (derogatory)
Barbarize -to become savage, uncultured, adopt foreign speech
Barbara -Sanskrit, stammering
Barbaroi -Greek, all who are not Greek
Baruch -scribe who wrote the words of Jeremiah in exile from Babylon
Bar -place where people drink alcohol until they can’t speak
Bar -whole body of babbling lawyers
Bar -anything which obstructs, hinders, or impedes
Barros -Gaulish, rod, nail, bushy end
Barr -Gaulish, tip, top, summit
Barrir -French, to make the sound of an elephant
Barroso -Spanish, muddy or name of person from a muddy place
Barrister -one who babbles in the court of law
Barre -French, to stop (stop speaking!)
Barren -childless (baby-less)
Barrier -Something which stops an advance, traps or holds something in place
Barring -stopping an advance or holding in place
Barrage -onslaught
Barrette -bar clip for women’s hair
Barbari -Persian flatbread (put it in your mouth)
Barb -Latin, sharp, pointed (don’t put in mouth)
Barba -Latin word meaning beard (pointed)
Barber -One who cuts beards & hair (also early doctors/ blood letters/ people with sharp utensils)
Barbados -Caribbean Island meaning the bearded ones
Barbuda -Caribbean Island meaning the bearded ones
Barābarī -Hindi, parity, to equal something or be as good as them
Barābar -Urdu, continuously, without interruption
caduceus, staff of hermes, symbol of medicine & barber pole (don’t put in mouth) also represents ida & pingala, energy moving up the body to enlightenment
mandarin words for bearded, barbarian, babbling foreigners are also similar:
(I don’t know Mandarin! I copied this bit from Victor Mair’s “Bearded Barbarian”)