Semitic-language names formed by semantic motivation from ‘less’, and their transcultural fortune: Whig leaders at Balliol as Dryden’s “sons of Belial”, and Swahili Mbilikimo for ‘Pygmy’

Abstract

The biblical compositional pattern “sons of no X” for “X–less ones” has been somewhat (just a bit) productive in Modern Hebrew, but as the Old Testament has been so influential across cultures since the Septuagint became available in the Hellenistic world, one comes across novel uses to which “son of Belial” has been put, such as in Dryden’s political allegory in Absalom and Achitophel, even as the etymology of Belial was not transparent to ones who did not know Hebrew and its word /bli/ ‘without’. Moreover, Arabic /bala/ ‘without’ also occurs in wordformation, and as the influence of Arabic along the eastern coast of Africa resulted in the Swahili language, the Swahili name for the Pigmies was formed as such an Arabic compound.