ב"ה
DERIVING
THE WORD ENGLISH NOUN 'DOG' DIRECTLY FROM THE HEBREW NOUN 'כלב' EMPLOYING גימטריא (HEBREW
ALPHANUMERICS)
Background: The Hebrew preposition כמו
(pronounced c'mo) means 'as', 'like'' 'such as', 'as though'. It is
shortened to the letter כ' (caf) when used as a conjunctive prefix, but the meaning is
retained. Now, an ambiguity occurs when the letter כ' is the first letter in a radical. Is
it merely functioning as a consonant that is the first letter in a radical?
Is it functioning as a prefix? Is it functioning as an abbreviation of the
word כמו, which is both a conjunctive and a preposition? I contend that we
cannot know which function it serves, because it is serving all these functions
concomitantly, but we can choose to relate to it as one or more or all of these
functions.
The word for 'dog' in Hebrew is כלב,
pronounced celev (I am wont to transliterate כּ' as a hard 'c', and not a 'k', as
this letter better corresponds to the Hebrew כּ', which, as you can clearly see it is a
mirror image of. I reserve the letter 'k' for transliteration of Hebrew letter ק').
The Hebrew word for 'heart' is לב, pronounced 'lev', (that this is the etymon of the word 'love'
should be eminently clear). It has been said that the word כלב (celev) should be understood as meaning
'like a heart', a description of a dog's nature.
More background: In the passage
below, which is an excerpt from a communication with an etymologist; I have
employed the age old method of calculating Hebrew values called מספר קטן מספרי
(Integral Reduced Value), as explicated on this site: http://www.inner.org/gematria/fourways.htm
Quoting myself: "You are clearly correct
that כ(מו)לב,
ce(mo)lev, is the etymon of the word lupus and its variant lobo. And yes,
it is now commonly agreed upon that canis lupus, the grey wolf, is the primeval wild dog. But, why did the כ' drop off
altogether? Why the 'b' to 'p' shift in the case of lupus? And where did
the ס' sound in
lupus come from?
I wondered if there was a way of
deriving the word dog from כלב (celev) directly arithmetically.
Here it is: the letter כ' (caf), equaling 20, is 2 X 10. The letter ב', beit, of course is two. The letters כ' and ב' share the same reduced value (מספר קטן), i.e., two. The letter ל' (pronounced lamed), equaling 30, is 3 X 10. Therefore, its reduced value is 3. So, 2 [the גימטריא (gematria) of ב']+2 (the reduced value of כ')=4. That gives us the ד' (dalet) sound in dog. The reduced value of ל' (lamed) is three, as I said. That gives is the ל' (gimmel) sound in dog. The word dog transliterated into Hebrew has the same value, seven, as the integral reduced value of the word כלב (celev), the reduced values of the כ' and the ל' being 2 and 3 respectively and the actual value of ב' being 2.
I am not attempting to treat the vowel sounds in either the word dog or כלב. I do not think the vowels should be ignored. I just don't know what to do about them at this juncture, as the 'ô' dog does not correspond exactly to any of the vowels in Hebrew.
In order to educe the noun 'dog' from 'כלב' I had to employ מספר קטן מספרי (integral reduced value), which is necessarily dependent upon מספר קטן (modulus 9 or reduced value). Most assuredly, there is the need to employ מספר הכרחי (absolute value) and מספר סדורי (ordinal value) when analyzing the etymology of other words as well and, in all probability, a combination of them.
Doreen Ellen Bell-Dotan,
DoreenDotan@gmail.com