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I want to say something about Barack Hussein Obama's name. It is a name to be proud of. It is an American name. It is a blessed name. It is a heroic name, as heroic and American in its own way as the name of General Omar Nelson Bradley or the name of Benjamin Franklin. And denigrating that name is a form of racial and religious bigotry of the most vile and debased sort. It is a prejudice against names deriving from Semitic languages!...

Barack and Hussein are Semitic words. Americans have been named with Semitic names since the founding of the Republic. Fourteen of our 43 presidents have had Semitic names. And, American English contains many Arabic-derived words that we use every day and without which we would be much impoverished. America is a world civilization with a world heritage, something Cunninghamism will never understand.

Barack is a Semitic word meaning "to bless" as a verb or "blessing" as a noun. In its Hebrew form, barak, it is found all through the Bible...

...let us take the name "Hussein." It is from the Semitic word, hasan, meaning "good" or "handsome." Husayn is the diminutive, affectionate form....

It is worth pointing out that John McCain's adopted daughter, Bridget, is originally from Bangladesh. Since Hussein is a very common name in Bangladesh, it is entirely possible that her birth father or grandfather was named Hussein. McCain certainly has Muslim relatives via adoption in his family. If Muslim relatives are a disqualification from high office in the United States, then McCain himself is in trouble...

The other thing to say about grandfathers named Hussein is that very large numbers of African-Americans probably have an ancestor ten or eleven generations ago with that name, in what is now Mali or Senegal or Nigeria. And, since so many thousands of Arab Muslims were made to convert to Catholicism in Spain after 1501, many Latinos have distant ancestors named Hussein, too. In fact, since there was a lot of Arab-Spanish intermarriage, and since there was subsequent Spanish intermarriage with other European Catholics, more European Americans are descended from a Hussein than they realize. The British royal family is quite forthright about the Arab line in their ancestry going back to Andalusia.

Obama, being a cousin of Dick Cheney on one side and having relatives in Kenya on the other, is just more and more typical of the 21st century United States.

So, anyway, Obama's first two names mean "Blessing, the Good." If we are lucky enough to get him for president, we can only hope that his names are prophetic for us.

Which brings me to Omar Bradley. Omar is an alternative spelling of Umar, i.e. Umar ibn al-Khattab, the second caliph of Sunni Islam. Presumably General Bradley was named for the poet Omar Khayyam, who bore the caliph's name. Omar Khayyam's Rubaiyat, in the "translation" of Edward FitzGerald, became enormously popular in Victorian America.

Gen. Omar Bradley, who bore a Semitic, Muslim first name, and shared it with the second Caliph of Sunni Islam, was the hero of D-Day and Normandy, of the Battle of the Bulge and the Ruhr.

Would Mr. Cunningham see Omar Bradley as un-American, as an enemy because of his name?

What about other American heroes, such as Gen. George Joulwan, former NATO Supreme Allied Commander of Europe? "Joulwan" is an Arabic name. Or there is Gen. John Abizaid, former CENTCOM commander. Abizaid is an Arabic name. Abi means Abu or "father of," and Zaid is a common Arab first name. Is Cunningham good enough to wipe their shoes? Is he going to call them traitors because they have Arabic names?

What about Congressman Darrell Issa of California? ("Isa" means Jesus in Arabic). Former cabinet secretary Donna Shalala? (Shalala means "waterfall" in Arabic).

I won't go into all the great Americans with Arabic names in sports, entertainment and business, against whom Cunningham would apparently discriminate on that basis. Does he want to take citizenship away from Kareem Abdul Jabbar [meaning "noble the servant of the Mighty"] and Ahmad Jamal [meaning "the most praised, beauty"]? What about Rihanna ["sweet basil," "aromatic"]? Tony Shalhoub [i.e. Mr. Monk]?

Let us take Benjamin Franklin. His first name is from the Hebrew Bin Yamin, the son of the Right (hand), or son of strength, or the son of the South (yamin or right has lots of connotations). The "Bin" means "son of," just as in modern colloquial Arabic. Bin Yamin Franklin is not a dishonorable name because of its Semitic root. By the way, there are lots of Muslims named Bin Yamin.

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Originally posted by DocTrowerFMF:
Given the current situation in the mid east and alot of our nations fear of muslims, they just don't want some one with a muslim sounding name in the white house.
That's my opinion and you know what they say about opinions

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Originally posted by outlaws93:

... but Barack Hussein Obama is hardly an American name... that is a middle eastern name... maybe even northern Africa....

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Sarah, Adam,

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Originally posted by outlaws93:
i dont even have an American name i have an English\Welch names all 3 of them...

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Originally posted by sweetsuds:
Interesting that you mention Jonathan. It's a Hebrew name, and names like Sarah, Adam, and May are quite common in the Arab world, and originated in the area. William is French and Peter is Greek. We're more of a melting pot than we like to think sometimes. And Bonesaw, you'll do just fine pronouncing the name of our CinC. I sometimes ask people to teach me to pronounce names if they are difficult; no one's ever objected to do so yet.

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Originally posted by sweetsuds:

And Bonesaw, you'll do just fine pronouncing the name of our CinC. I sometimes ask people to teach me to pronounce names if they are difficult; no one's ever objected to do so yet.

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Originally posted by The_Bonesaw:

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Originally posted by sweetsuds:

And Bonesaw, you'll do just fine pronouncing the name of our CinC. I sometimes ask people to teach me to pronounce names if they are difficult; no one's ever objected to do so yet.

I think you completely missed the context of my post.

What I said was: "I wants a preserdent that can talk more gooder."

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Originally posted by outlaws93:

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Originally posted by DocTrowerFMF:
Given the current situation in the mid east and alot of our nations fear of muslims, they just don't want some one with a muslim sounding name in the white house.
That's my opinion and you know what they say about opinions

yup thats true... but Barack Hussein Obama is hardly an American name... that is a middle eastern name... maybe even northern Africa....