How to pronounce the name Habakkuk

    There is no one answer to the question. A commenter to a youtube video on this rather important subject notes that in current English, it is pronounced like this or this, not like this (a hilarious mispronunciation). The last time a fellow academic asked me the question, I refrained from telling her the original pronunciation of חבקוק (you have to have a background in comparative Semitics to discuss the matter properly), and limited myself to repeating the traditional Hebrew pronunciation, “hav-a-kook,” with the accent on “kook” (pronounced here). To which she instantly replied, “every family hav-a-kook.”

    On a more serious note, a commentary I wrote on Habakkuk for the open access Bible Brief series is now available. You are welcome to download it from this site. The editor of the series is Stephen L. Cook, who blogs at biblische Ausbildung.

    For everything you wanted to know about the name of Habakkuk, but were afraid to ask, see John F. Hobbins, “Il nome del profeta Abacuc,” Rivista biblica italiana 35 (1987) 307-311. I wrote that article when I was 8 years old.

Comments

[Thomas Middlebrook]

Thank you for the link, I really appreciate the section titled, "the Prophet as Intercessor. " I think you get at the heart of the matter.

[Rick Wadholm Jr.]

Thanks for sharing this. I received a good laugh! :-) Also, I'm always looking for more resources as introductions to the books of Scripture and will bookmark the site. Do you have a copy of your article on the name of Habakkuk that you wrote when you were "8 years old"? :-)

[MokumAlef]

And don't underestimate the confusion and hilarity if one of your students would have been a female member of the famous Kuk (also spelled Kook) family, called Chava ...

[Alan Lenzi]

I guess I don't hear the humor in the hilarious mispronunciation. That's the way I heard it growing up in the Midwest. I always thought it was odd to hear people say ha-BAK-kuk. Both ways are Anglicisms and equally "wrong" representations of the Hebrew word. What do you think the "original" pronunciation would have been? (The Akkadian cognate is habbaqu:'qu / hambaqu:'qu. The nominative case vowel makes the word sound even worse in English.)

[John Hobbins]

Hi Alan,

The mispronunciation, which, like a lot of things, is in the ear/eye of the hearer/beholder, involves kuk being pronounced like the last syllable in Bangkok. How often that city name is cause for embellishments.

If I remember correctly, Ran Zadok argues that habbaqu:'qu/hambaqu:'qu is a West Semitic loanword in Akkadian (note that the root is otherwise unattested in Akkadian, but common enough in W Semitic). It denotes a plant which itself may have been non-native to Assyria and Babylonia.

habbaqu:'qu/hambaqu:'qu is most likely the pronunciation that would have been current in the prophet's day. There are plenty of plant names in Hebrew applied to men and women, whereas in English plant names correlate more with one gender: Rose, Myrtle, Ivy.

The phonological shape of the PN in MT is an example of dissimilation of one consonant with compensatory doubling of another.

[Alan Lenzi]

"If I remember correctly, Ran Zadok argues that habbaqu:'qu/hambaqu:'qu is a West Semitic loanword in Akkadian (note that the root is otherwise unattested in Akkadian, but common enough in W Semitic)." That makes sense. And Zadok would be the guy to have made the case. Thanks.

On this: "The phonological shape of the PN in MT is an example of dissimilation of one consonant with compensatory doubling of another." I don't understand. Wouldn't the earlier form be something like a qataltu:l nominal form, *habaqbu:q(u), in which the reduplicated second radical of the root is assimilated fully into the preceding quf (*habaqqu:qu) because the /b/ and the /q/ have such distant points of articulation? The Akkadians and others may have heard a nasal preceding the first /b/ in the noun, but that seems like a secondary dissimilation.

It's been a while since I've thought much about comparative semitics.

[John Hobbins]

I haven't looked at this for a long time either.

As for the phonological shape of the Akkadian, I believe it can be parsed as a qattalul, a pattern identified, if memory serves, by Brockelmann.

re: MT's ħɑ̆ḇɑqqúːʷq (per Anstey's transliteration system, the best out there), I was imagining that the doubled "b" of the phonological shape attested in Akkadian was degeminated (I should have used that term, or lenition, rather than dissimilation), with compensatory lengthening of the "q." If instead the pattern is qataltu:l as you suggest, or qattaltu:l, the geminated "q" moght be understood as a reflex of an underlying "qb," in which case the MT would preserve in that respect the more original pronunciation, the Akkadian being a witness to lenition. On the other hand, the "q" gemination could be "spontaneous" (the term of art found in many grammars for gemination of position).

Combining the above reflections, the name would have been pronounced as ħabbaqqu:'q(u) in the prophet's day.

[Alan Lenzi]

I was just trying to explain the MT's form in terms of nominal forms listed in the Hebrew grammars I have on hand. (I still don't own Bauer and Leander, who probably give the most complete list. And I don't have a copy of Brockelmann, either. I've got to get these!) I didn't see a qattalu:l in the list by Muraoka. If this was the original form in BH, one would have to come up with an explanation for the shortened first vowel (in a closed syllable). I suppose lenition could do that (lose the geminate bet, open the syllable, which would allow vowel reduction). If the word is a loan into Akkadian, one has to expect all kinds of oddities--probably best not to work backwards from there. Have you ever looked at the Greek transliterations of Akkadian words from Hellenistic times? Or the Greek renderings of Akkadian names? Very weird and interesting.

In any case, fun thinking with you about this. It's been a while since I've been on.

[Alan Lenzi]

Oh, I meant to include the Akkadian renderings of Greek names, too. Those are very inconsistent.

[John Hobbins]

It is nice conversing about these things with you; it sounds as if you have a good grasp of the issues. Why am I not surprised.

If you get back into the topic, you will also want to take a look at Joshua Fox's monograph (yes, Joshua ben-Michael).

I published an article about the name while a seminary student, in Italian. I haven't laid my hands on an offprint of it of late; regardless, if I parsed it then as qattalul, that doesn't mean I got it right. Your suggestions are worthy of further investigation.

One proposal worth dismissing as implausible is the old suggestion (but still repeated by J.J.M. Roberts, who might have known better) that the name of the prophet is a loanword from Akkadian.

If you have time to look at my Bible brief on Habakkuk, you will find plenty to sink your teeth into.

[Alan Lenzi]

Hey John, I ILLed Brockelmann and Bauer-Leander the day of our discussion here. I got Brockelmann through ILL the other day, but he didn't have anything on Habakkuk. I just now got Bauer and Leander. They address the original form of Habakkuk on p. 483 under qataltu:l, where they write that the noun presumably goes back to *habaqbu:q. That doesn't mean they're right, especially given their "vermutlich." But the pattern shows up in two other Hebrew nouns (ˀsɑp̄súːp̄ in Num 11:4 and ħɑ̆ḇɑrbuːr-oːṯ in Jer 13:23), so it's historically possible. (I'd better scan these oldies but goodies while I've got the chance.)

[John Hobbins]

Thanks for the background research. One of these days I'll dig out my old paper and see how it compares.