2713: Mythical Whale Names in Hebrew and Arabic May 25, 2024

Like several other modern words, the word for ‘whale’ in Modern Hebrew is from a mythical beast, here לויתן (Levitan) which in English is rendered “Leviathan”, a sea-monster. While there is a history of turning biblical monsters into normal animals has happened elsewhere, this case is distinct in that there are some translations in the Book of Jonah that feature a whale, but this is from the Hebrew דג גדול (dag gadol) literally “big fish”, and whether or not that refers to a whale, it would not make for a suitable term.

Many of Modern Hebrew’s words were also created to draw upon Arabic, whose word for a whale is حوت (ḥout) which is not related to any in Hebrew, but also almost certain was from an earlier word for some kind of sea-monster, either from a variation of حَيَّة (ḥaya) meaning ’snake’ with an ending more meaning “sea-snake” or from a typical Semitic root ح ي و (ḥ-y-w) meaning ‘live’ having once referred to some kind of ancient beast. This is different to the Islamic Whale, a whale believed to be holding up the Earth in a supposed cosmic ocean.