In a message dated 4/6/2015 9:50:19 A.M. Eastern Daylight Time,
omarkusto@xxxxxxxxx writes:
the origin of a name.
It all started with "Hannibal's Cookbook", a poem by L. Helm.
(Cfr. "Girls, study your cookery-books! If you want man's affections,
follow these directions"* -- it was a music-hall ditty sung by Florrie Ford,
but cookery is not cook).
O. K. traces the "Hannibal" mentioned by Harris -- Harris mentions a
Lithuanian ancestor of his character, and the ultimate rigid designation, as O.
K. notes, is to the proper name 'Ba'al'.
This is so because "Hannibal" (or Annibale, in Italian -- they hate them
there, even if the unintended hero of "Punica", a long poem, ends up being
Annibale, rather than Scipione!) means eans "grace of Ba'al".
Humpty Dumpty once asked Alice: "What does "Alice" mean?". Her literal
response was: "Must a name mean anything?". "Of course it must!" was Dumpty's
curt answer.
"Hannibal" is thus a compound name (unlike "Alice", but more like
"Humpty-Dumpty"). It is Phoenician for
"hann", 'grace of' followed by "Ba'aL", the name of the famous Phoenician
god.
Ba'al, pronounced "bah-al", was a powerful Phoenician deity (if you
believe in those thngs) which had a strong cult at Carthage, which originated
as
a Phoenician colony.
Hannibal once had a vision. When he asked the meaning of it to his
favourite deity, Melqart, Melart replied, in Carthaginian, "What thou
beholdest is
the desolation of Italy. Follow thy star and inquire no farther into the
dark counsels of heaven."
As Omar notes, these are "polytheistic religions so these cults are not
mutually exclusive", plus the adage that if parents are usually the least
appropriate people to have children, so they are usually inappropriate in
choosing names for them. A recent statistics showed that 59% of the Finnish
population have changed their names given at birth by deed poll.
It may be argued that 'deed poll' is a legal defeasible concept that
Hannibal lacked, but the implicature is that while Hannibal's father THOUGHT
that Hannibal was literally the 'grace of Ba'al', this is consistent very much
with Hannibal being graced by his frequent conversations with Melqart. The
keyword, as Omar notes, is "POLYtheism".
Cheers,
Speranza
*
Girls, if you love a man sincere
And want your love to grow
The problem by the root
Just take and feed the brute
Every courtship from the kitchen
Always ought to start
They say that through man's appetite
Is the way to reach his heart.
Girls, girls, study your cookery-books
If you want man's affections
Follow the directions
Cook something tasty
Give him the tender part
You must tickle his little Mary
If you want to touch his heart.
Girls, if you follow this advice
He'll do a lot for you
He'll ne'er be rough or rude
His weakest point's his food
Two hours before his dinner
He looks fit to do a crime
He's full of love and kindness
When it's his dinner time.
After the parson's tied the knot
If you're a decent cook
You'll find he won't get blue
If you properly cook his goo
Make his pastry light and he
Should get right in his head
A nice rice pudding reminds him of
The day that he was wed.
Written and composed by Joe Burley & Bennett Scott, 1908.
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