Baraku Oobama

[pne]

I wonder what Barack Obama's name would be in Japanese... the family name just screams to be Japonified, and 大浜 seems like an obvious enough rendering (to be read "Ōbama"). And that name even exists as a surname, according to ENAMDICT! (And as a placename, which can also be read "Ōhama".)

Not quite so sure about the given name, though ENAMDICT lists 馬楽 for "Baraku" as a "given name, as-yet not classified by sex". So, 大浜馬楽?

(Before I looked it up, the first thing that came to my mind was 馬駱. "Horse camel"?)

...hm, after looking him up in the Japanese Wikipedia, I was pointed to 小浜, which is a placename (for example, in Fukui or, formerly, in Nagasaki) and surname and is read "Obama", which is even closer. (Also "Ohama" or "Kohama" or "Kobama".)

Obama, Fukui, in particular, apparently took advantage of this similarity in names; see the WP article, for example.

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I'm also curious about the etymology of his given name. Is it Semitic, and if so, is it from the root b-r-q "lightning" like the biblical prophet Barak, or from b-r-k "blessing"? (Hebrew Wikipedia uses the "q" spelling for his name, but that may not mean much, since I believe that's the most common letter to represent [k] in foreign loanwords, given that /k/ is pronounced [x] in some positions. Arabic Wikipedia uses "k", but that also need not mean much.)

Comments

[elgrande.livejournal.com]

Since you already checked wikipedia articles to find out about Barack in Hebrew and Arabic, I suppose the idea may have come to you before, but just in case: Perhaps you can see the Japanese version of Barack Obama in the Japanese wikipedia article? I can't read Japanese, so I don't know.

[pne.livejournal.com]

I'm not quite sure what motivated this comment.

Perhaps you can see the Japanese version of Barack Obama in the Japanese wikipedia article?

To find out what? The Semitic origin of his name?

Or how to write it in Japanese?

If the latter, you may have misunderstood me (and/or are not that familiar with the Japanese writing system).

Japanese has two syllabaries, one of which is used (among other things) to render, phonetically, foreign loanwords and proper names. So his name is written in Japanese using these symbols ("katakana"), as バラック・オバマ Barakku Obama. (I did get that spelling from Japanese Wikipedia. And it surprised me because I was expecting his last name to be written オバーマ Obāma, with a long rather than a short /a/ in the middle.)

I was musing on how his name would be written with Sino-Japanese characters ("kanji") if his name had been a native Japanese name. Since it isn't, there's no obvious right answer -- it's a bit like wondering whether a Japanese with surname "Maya" would have written their name "Mayer", "Meier", "Mejer", etc. if their name were German; since it's not, there's no real answer.

[sarah-cb.livejournal.com]

From what I understand, his name if actually African, or something. Not 100% sure on that, but I believe that's what I read.

[elgrande.livejournal.com]

I misunderstood you. I thought you were wondering how it is actually spelt in Japanese. And I thought you were implying that the name would tend to be Japonified because of its similarity to Japanese names/words/word structure. (Perhaps a bit like first names of former European monarchs are often mentioned in German in their German version.)

[pne.livejournal.com]

(Perhaps a bit like first names of former European monarchs are often mentioned in German in their German version.)

Ah, I see, yes.

It's my impression that Japonifying personal names in this manner is about as common as the practice you mention: it was used sometimes in the past, but is not usual now, and you just render the name phonetically.

[pne.livejournal.com]

I've read that "Obama" is a Luo (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luo_(Kenya_and_Tanzania)) name, so that's African.

I don't know about "Barack", though, and "Hussein" seems to be <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Husayn>the common Arabic name</a>, a diminutive of "Hasan", meaning "good" or "handsome". Obama's grandfather adopted the name "Hussein" when he converted to Islam, so his middle name is almost certainly the Arabic name, rather than an African one; I'm wondering whether his first name might be Arabic, too, and if so, how it's spelled in Arabic.

[sarah-cb.livejournal.com]

I might have gotten which name was African confused, LOL. I'm allowed to do that, XD :)

[lnbw.livejournal.com]

And it surprised me because I was expecting his last name to be written オバーマ Obāma, with a long rather than a short /a/ in the middle.

Japanese has a weird and inconsistent balance between spelling and pronunciation when rendering foreign words and names into its syllabary -- on the one hand there's バイオリン "violin" which is accurate to the vowels of the English despite sounding (to the Japanese-speaking part of my brain, which admittedly might not be equivalent to a native speaker's intuition) very awkward, and on the other hand there's セピア "sepia" (sEpia instead of sipia), which is clearly influenced by the spelling.

So they interact in weird ways, and it doesn't surprise me that Obama's last name is written this way in Japanese because it's a compromise between the pronunciation and the spelling -- and is the simpler alternative, since it doesn't have that long vowel.

(Incidentally, you spelled his first name "Barak" in your post but it's actually "Barack.")

[pne.livejournal.com]

(Incidentally, you spelled his first name "Barak" in your post but it's actually "Barack.")

Oops; fixed now. Thanks.

on the one hand there's バイオリン "violin"

Hee -- funny that you should mention that word. That's also the spelling I learned, so I was surprised that the Wikipedia lemma was ヴァイオリン (http://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/ヴァイオリン) instead.

[bluewingedcat.livejournal.com]

Katakana will take the kinetic approach, if you will, to spelling: Whatever's easiest.

So, since バ is already pronounced as "bah", it's left alone.

As far as kanji goes, he could use established kanji characters. But, he could also just make up his own. Cause kanji is weird like that.

*shrug* I confirmed I aced 102 today? :D