Soap is originally from the Proto Indo European root seib, which meant “pour, drip, trickle”. In Western Germanic this became saipo, and was used to refer to a reddish hair dye that was used by Germanic warriors to create a frightening appearance. This word was borrowed into Latin as sapo, used of the oils that were skin cleaning agents at the time. In Old English it was sape, which became soap by the middle ages. Modern soap, made from lye, animal fat, and various perfumes and oils, was invented by the people of Palestine and Iraq, and the recipe hasn’t changed much since the 7th century. Since lye (sodium hydroxide) is caustic, soapmaking was a dangerous process that could cause chemical burns or blindness.

The word soap indicates the focusing of strong, rounded, earthy energy on a particular point, and likely reflects the application of a liquid or pliable natural substance to the body.

This is the first of an occasional series on the current crop of US presidential candidates. I’m going to analyze these names the same way I would analyze anyone’s: a combination of name history and sound/meaning analysis to give an overview of the person’s life trajectory.

Hillary ultimately comes from Proto Indo European sel, meaning “happy” (which may be related to sol, “whole”; see savior). Sel became hilaros in Greek, and was borrowed into Latin as hilaris; the nominal form was hilaritas, “happiness”, which is the root of English hilarity and hilarious. Hilarius was a Latin masculine name derived from hilaris, and a feminine form, Hillaria, appeared in English in Chaucer’s time. By the 1500’s, the names had become Hilary and Hillary respectively. The sound of the name suggests a rising, slightly tense energy that comes from home and hearth and expands to fill space; also indicated is great energy and stamina in the face of hardship.

Rodham is an ancient family of Northumberland, perhaps named after an ancient town there, now unknown. “Ham” is an old worn-down suffix meaning “home”, but I don’t know what “rod” may refer to. Rodham was Hillary’s maiden name. Its sound quality suggests a very strong Source energy that drives toward a decision or doorway; on the other side of the doorway is hearth, home, and manifestation.

Finally, Clinton is a name that may be from Irish or English. If Irish, the name is a reduced from of McClinton, an Anglicized version of Mac Giolla Fhionntáin, meaning “the son of the servant of Fhionntáin”, a saint. If English, it may come ultimately from the town of Glympton in Oxfordshire (a town on the Glym river), or from Glinton in Cambridgeshire (a name meaning “enclosed town”). In any case, the sense is of a light energy enclosed, within boundaries, which is released and travels on a rising path that narrows toward a goal.

Since Clinton is Hillary’s married name, I am not sure what role those energies play in her life. But the names Hillary and Rodham both have strong associations with both great energy and power and home and hearth, which may be fitting for both her presidential ambitions and her strong stances on health care and family issues.

This term refers to a language family which includes Hebrew, Arabic, Aramaic, Assyrian, and many others. Interestingly, however, in the form anti-Semitic, it almost always is synonymous with the term Jewish; i.e. anti-Semitic only means anti-Jewish, not anti-Arabic or anti-Assyrian.

Semitic is derived from Semite, a word introduced into English in the mid-1800’s and referred to anyone who came from a culture where a Semitic language was spoken. Semite came from Sem, the Latin form of Shem, the name of one of the three sons of Noah. In the 19th century, a great deal of anthropological ink was spilled trying to get historical and linguistic data to line up with the account of the Old Testament; and it was commonly supposed that Noah’s three sons Shem, Ham, and Japheth were the ancestors of three great branches of humanity — the Semites (as described above), the Hamites (sometimes considered to be Egyptians and Canaanites, other times considered to be Africans), and the Japhethians (everyone else).

This threefold division has been long since discredited, both in linguistics and in anthropology. In linguistics, there are many, many recognized language families. Some families are huge, like Indo European (which includes everything from English to Welsh to Italian to Russian to Greek to Hindi), Afro-Asiatic (Hebrew, Arabic, Berber…), Altaic (Korean, Japanese (?), Turkish…), Sino-Tibetan (Chinese, Tibetan, Burmese…). Some families are quite small — Basque, for example, is in a family by itself, as far as anyone knows.

The name Shem is a hard-working one: it indicates a path of difficulty along which directed, connective energy flows, leading to manifestation. Sem is similar, but the path is not indicated to be difficult.