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Somewhere along the way, I developed an interest in the origins of words, probably as a result of exposure to the classical, so called ‘dead’ languages, Latin and Sanskrit. This was never a serious pursuit but I found it quite entertaining to discover remnants of older cultures, especially non-European ones, emerging from my use of English. I suspect that any way for a Black boy to throw off the yoke of Euro-think, was a subconscious joy…a rather small, personal victory.

Back in the 80’s, my word hobby received a weekly boost when National Public Radio aired a series with wordsmith and poet, the late John Ciardi. If you’re interested, a few podcasts from the series have been reposted on the NPR website. No matter what I was doing on Fridays, I found time to listen in on him to get my weekly fix. Some of those sessions hold a prominent place in memory, continuing to inspire. For me, the older the origin, the truer the meaning. Discovering the origins of a word is like archeology or time-travel. However, I don’t ‘need no’ fedora like Indiana Jones or an imagination like H.G. Wells, just pajamas (where does that come from?…oh it’s Persian!), a fast Net connection and Wikipedia, Google or the OED online (Oxford English Dictionary). By the way the word ‘fedora’ comes from ‘Fédora’, a popular French play by Victorien Sardou (1831-1908) that opened 1882, in which the heroine, a Russian princess named Fédora Romanoff, was originally performed by Sarah Bernhardt, actress and notorious cross-dresser.

Here are a few discoveries:

Copacetic, (or copasetic or sometimes, as in Black vernacular, ‘copastetic’) meaning ‘very acceptable’, ‘just fine’. ‘Everything is copacetic’.

According to Ciardi, copacetic originates in the Hebrew phrase ‘(ha) kol beseder’, (literally ‘all in [the] order’) meaning ‘everything is alright’. The Seder or ‘order’ is the ritualistic retelling of the Exodus annually for Pesach (Passover).

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Ignite, meaning to ’set on fire’. Virtually every dictionary will tell you that ignite and its derivations originate in the Latin ‘ignis’ or ‘fire’.

However it actually comes from PIE or the Proto-Indo-European language and cultures associated with it. The root of ignite emerges from the Vedic culture of India, thousands of years older than Rome. In the Indian classical language, Sanskrit, ‘agni’ or ‘fire’ is both a noun and a deity. Agni is the god of fire, lightning and the sun.

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Lufthansa, the German airline, is a combination of two words from the Sanskrit, ‘lupth’ meaning ‘air’ or ‘invisible’ (’luft’ is ‘air’ in German) and ‘hansa’ meaning ’swan’. When the air service first started, the aircraft they employed were pure white, resembling huge white swans as they disappeared into the distance.

Lufthansa Airlines logo

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Abracadabra (sometimes spelled Abrakadabra) is a word used as an incantation or theatrically by stage magicians.

The original Hebrew and later Aramaic was either ‘avda kedavra’, which means, “what was said has been done,” or ‘avra kedavra’, which means “what was said has come to pass.” Over time, it was corrupted to its current pronunciation with the replacement of both “v” sounds with “b” sounds (b and v can be interchangeable in Aramaic).

More recently, it was an incantation to be used as a cure for fevers and inflammations. The first known European mention was in the 2nd century CE (Common Era) in a poem called ‘De Medicina Praecepta’ by Serenus Sammonicus, physician to the Roman emperor Caracalla, who prescribed that the sufferer from the disease wear an amulet containing the word written in the form of an inverted cone.

Abracadabra as an amulet

Of late, we hear ‘Avra Kedavra’ in the Harry Potter series of books as a killing curse, but this is a gross debasement of its original intent. The original Hebrew ‘avara kedavara’, in a religious context, describes the matter-producing, life-giving utterance of G-d that created the Universe.

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We are inundated with words of African origins, but true to form, etymologists that study the roots of Indo-European languages typically overlook them, assuming that little of African origin is of real substance. So we are left with commodity words like banjo (Bantu), banana (Wolof), coffee (Amharic), jazz (Mandinke), jamboree (Swahili), mojo (Fulani), okra (Igbo) and many others.

In my research, I found one extraordinary African concept marginalized to a criminal degree. Before being sullied by Europeans, the word nigger (originally pronounced ‘en-jer’) was revered as the ‘divine epithet’ of the ancient Egyptians, who called themselves Kemites and their land ‘Kemet’, the ‘Black Land’ or ‘Ta-Merri’, the ‘Beloved Land’. N-G-R (’en-jer’), a word without vowels like many classical languages such as ancient Egyptian or biblical Hebrew, was the word for G-d. In Kemetic society, the word for ‘nature’ which is interchangeable with deity, was ‘N-Y-T-R’ (’net-jer’). Pronounce ‘net-jer’ then ‘nigger’ and one hears a clear, but problematic connection.

In many African languages particularly the Niger-Congo language family, words that connect with people, gods and groups often begin with ‘n’. For instance, the word ‘Nkosi’ in Xhosa (South Africa) is ‘god’. The word ‘Ndaba’ in Zulu (South Africa) is ‘council or gathering of elders’. ‘Negus’ in Amharic (Ethiopia) is ‘emperor’.

In this context, the study of word origins becomes significant. By knowing who I am, racist remarks and racial epithets become impotent. Every time someone uses ‘nigger’ to refer to a Black person, they are actually calling that person ‘god’.

Teach this to your children. It makes a difference.

For the graphically inclined or anyone else with a sense of visual play, Idée Labs has built an online application that allows you to search images on Flickr, the photo sharing site, using color as the search criteria. With the ‘Multicolour Search Lab’, you can select a single color or combine up to 10 colors and be presented with subsets of photos (50 at a time) selected from Flickr’s 10 million so-called ‘most interesting’ Creative Commons images.

Even though I’m in between hand-washing dishes, writing and assessing employees, it took only moments to produce the grids below. To see an individual photograph, just click an image you like from the grid to view it on Flickr.

search results using primary red

selected photo from the red grid

combination of light green, red, lavender and an orange-brown

selected photo from the combination grid

This is cool stuff for graphic designers, photographers, editors and those who appreciate the technology. Idée Labs provides a secondary application that allows you to upload and color search your own photos. Now what would be really cool is if I could apply this to my own subset of…say, a million photos of Africa!

U.S. economic, military and political dominance is likely to decline over the next two decades, according to a new U.S. intelligence report on global trends. This report released in November 2008 from the National Intelligence Council predicts China, India and Russia will increasingly challenge American preeminence. It also says the dollar may no longer be the world’s major currency and that food and water shortages will fuel conflict. The report, Global Trends 2025: A Transformed World, concedes that these outcomes are not inevitable and will depend on the actions of world leaders. I say that it depends more on the actions of ordinary citizens like you and me.

The preeminence we enjoy as Americans is neither a divine right nor a gift. We earned it. We became a great nation because our great grandparents, grandparents and parents answered the call and accomplished what no nation had done before.

Now the call is upon us again, but the landscape is very different. China and India both are hungrier for preeminence than we are. And, based on sheer numbers alone, their opportunities for success are greater. For example, China graduates 250,000 engineers a year, compared with 50,000 in the U.S. To recharge our dwindling lead, we must educate ourselves better than they do. We must create new opportunities for this great nation and KEEP those opportunities HERE rather than selling them to our national competition.

I have a very small job with UPS, currently the greatest shipping company on the planet. Every night I see the results of exported American technology when planeloads of PCs built with our manufacturing, design and software know-how arrive here in Louisville. Dell and H-P ship tens of thousands of their products daily from China. In my two years at UPS Freight, I’ve watched the volume of imports from Asia and Latin America increase significantly. During that time, our American shipping volume has remained essentially flat. America is producing less at home, opting instead to close factories in Ohio and Michigan and relocate them to Mexico or China.

In this context, I see in this report my opportunity to do something about guaranteeing American preeminence. I can provide superior service to my customers. If given the opportunity to ship early, I can take it. When a shipment is due tomorrow and we still have the opportunity to make flight or truck it, I can take it…even if it means exhorting my employees to stay a few more minutes. And why? Not because FedEx has its Louisville operations down the street. It’s because I know that there is a younger person in China, with more energy and better grades, who has to make the same decision.

Now is the time to demonstrate that we are the greatest nation in the world. We have much work to do. As a nation, we have to become hungrier, leaner and more competitive. As a necessary first step, we must become less divisive and learn again to be a nation.

Next, take nothing for granted. Asian economies are strong and growing partly because workers there realize there is always someone waiting in line for the opportunity to replace them. Unfortunately, we too often assume that our livelihoods and current national preeminence is a birthright. Wrong.

Finally, replace rhetoric with action. We can no longer afford to sit back and tell each other how great America is. That lip service falls on deaf ears in Asia anyway. Regardless of predicted trends of waning American influence, we need to roll up our sleeves and get to work. Whatever work that is, do your very best. It has implications that are greater than yourself…it has the potential of keeping our nation great.

Miniature Magen David, Taketomi Island, Okinawa (mag. 75x)

As poet William Blake wrote,

To see a world in a grain of sand,
And a heaven in a wild flower,
Hold infinity in the palm of your hand,
And eternity in an hour.

The creation provides us with miracles ‘morning, noon and night’ to quote the Amidah, the central prayer of the Jewish liturgy. Seek them out, embrace them and open the doors to awe and humility.

http://discovermagazine.com/photos/01-each-grain-of-sand-a-tiny-work-of-art

In the early hours of the morning of December 3, 1984, in the heart of the city of Bhopal in the Indian state of Madhya Pradesh, a Union Carbide subsidiary pesticide plant released 42 tons of methyl isocyanate, exposing at least 520,000 people to toxic gases. The Bhopal disaster is frequently cited as the world’s worst industrial disaster resulting in the immediate deaths of more than 3,000 people and 8,000 dead within two weeks. An estimated additional 8,000 have died since from gas related diseases with 120,000 people suffering from gas related chronic illnesses.

Bhopal protest - 2008

In the photo above, victims of the gas tragedy and other protesters carry an effigy of Warren Anderson, former Chairman of Union Carbide, to mark the 24th anniversary of the chemical disaster.