ACADEMY OF SAINT GABRIEL REPORT 1390 http://www.s-gabriel.org/1390 ************************************ From: "S Friedemann" 19 Nov 1998 Greetings from the Academy of Saint Gabriel! You wanted to know if the Hebrew word , meaning "war, battle," would have been used as a feminine name in period. You also asked for some history on it's origin. Here is the information we have found. or is a Hebrew word meaning "quarrel, fight, altercation, anger." [2] It appears to be a modern word that was first used when the Hebrew language was resurrected in the early part of this century. In ancient Hebrew, the word for battle or war is . (The is an with a dot underneath, the is an with a dash over the top, and the is an with a circumflex accent.) It seems unlikely that was used as a word in ancient Hebrew, as we did not find any other words beginning with the consonants and then . [1] However, neither of these words, regardless of the period they are from, would have been used as names by Jews or other people in period. While it is a common practice in modern Israel to use common Hebrew words as name, this was not the case among medieval Jews, whose naming patterns were quite conservative. Medieval Jewish girl were usually given the names of Jewish women in the Old Testament or feminine names from the surrounding culture. Jews in period had a Hebrew name that was used within their community, and then a vernacular name that was used in public. For more information on period Jewish names, we recommond the following articles on the web: "Jewish Naming Convention in Angevin England" http://www.sca.org/heraldry/laurel/names/jewish.html "Jewish Names Found in 1292 Census of Paris" http://www.sca.org/heraldry/laurel/names/paris.html#jewish "Medieval Spanish Jewish Names of the 13th and 14th Centuries" http://www.panix.com/~mittle/names/juliana/iberian-jewish/ We're sorry that we could not be more useful to you, and hope that you will not hesitate to write again if any part was unclear or if you have further questions. Additional research and commentary on this letter was provided by Arval Benicoeur, Gotfrid von Schwaben, Pedro de Alcazar, and Brad Miller. For the Academy, --Aryanhwy merch Catmael November 19, 1998 --------------------------------------- References: [1] _Brown-Driver-Briggs-Gesenius Hebrew-English Lexicon_ (Peabody, Massachusetts: Hendrickson Publishers, 1979) [2] _Signet: Hebrew-English/ English-Hebrew Dictionary_ by Dov Ben-Abba, 1980.