The Tale of Daniel

https://www.hillelwayne.com/post/tale-of-daniel/

by hwayne • 2 years ago

192 57 2 years ago

Graph of Daniel vs time: https://rowzero.io/workbook/CA82F353F7060CA9411A12EB

pvg• 2 years ago

And, for those who enjoy historical primary sources, Damn, Daniel, 2016 CE: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kfFcyTuopbI

em-bee• 2 years ago

because of the date, i'm gonna let this pass

aidenn03• 2 years ago

Might be nice to adjust per-capita if that information is available.

kwhitefoot• 2 years ago

That was fun and very much in the spirit of Hacker News.

JohnMakin• 2 years ago

Word of caution on giving children “interesting” or cute names - my father’s legal first name was a variation on “daniel” (a common nickname) and since his passing and becoming the executor of what little was left of his estate, I was astounded at how many stupid issues he had with credit reports and even dumb things like utility bills incorrectly “correcting” his name to Daniel.

ginko• 2 years ago

I never understood why people do that in the first place. Sure, call your son Billy but putting William in the documents doesn't hurt.

vundercind3• 2 years ago

Those, and even worse the “cute” spelling variations on normal names, are baffling to me. You’ve just condemned your kid to a lifetime of minor (and sometimes more-than-minor) hassles, with very little justification.

[edit] I actually think a lot of “bad” celebrity kid names are a ton better than that crap. At least with “Apple” and “Rocket” folks can guess the correct spelling nearly 100% of the time.

ogab• 2 years ago

This is my pet peeve about Duke and Duchess of Sussex naming their kids “Archie” and “Lilibet”.

Even Harry’s birth name is “Henry” — Archie’s middle name “Harrison” is clever though.

Spooky23• 2 years ago

Credit agencies will screw anything up. My wife and her mother shared the same first name with a different middle name, whose first letter happened to be one off.

20 years after her name changed, they both had issues with messed up records. It got bad when insurance carriers got it jumbled up.

losvedir• 2 years ago

As the father of a son named Daniel, I found this fascinating. Thanks!

I think I agree with the comment in the conclusion that Torah names are used by non-Jews when a Christian comes across the name. But I don't think in this case it's because of the supposed prophecies about Jesus but because the stories about Daniel in the Book of Daniel are memorable. I remember hearing about "Daniel in the Lion's Den" and Daniel sitting in flames in church and in my Children's Bible stories.

But I chose the name for my son not (directly) because of its religious significance but because it's a normal, known name, in both English and Spanish. That is, neither a WASP American or a Mexican will really bat an eye at it. As a Hispanic American, that's something I've appreciated about my own name, Gabriel (and would love a historical deep dive on that name!). I couldn't really find any other names like that.

0823498723498722• 2 years ago

David, Leonardo, Sebastian? (just going off baby name sites; wonder what ads I'll be seeing for the next few weeks?)

There was a line in To Kill a Mockingbird about being named for a Confederate general leading to slow, steady, drinking, but when I looked at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_American_Civil_War_gen... they have the WASP standards: British kings, Other kings, Biblical.

(they also don't [from looking at A-C] seem to have the <ancestral name> <everyday name> <family name> triad that was common in certain parts of the US during my youth)

madcaptenor• 2 years ago

As a father of a daughter named Claudia, it has that property as well, although that doesn't help you since you have a son.

aidenn03• 2 years ago

Gabriel also appears in both the Hebrew scriptures (in the Ketuvim, which only names two angels) and the Gospels, being both the angel who explains Daniel's visions to him, and involved in the revelations for the births of both Jesus and John the Baptist.

Is Michael (or it s cognate) at all common as a name in Mexico? That's a figure that is at least as prominent as Gabriel across the Abrahamic religions (in particular the prominent inclusion in the Leonine Prayers keep it a popular name in many Roman Catholic regions).

klipt• 2 years ago

Michael (or it s cognate) at all common as a name in Mexico

That would be Miguel.

justusthane• 2 years ago

You might like this site, which gives name overlaps between two languages: https://mixedname.com/english_spanish_masculine_names

limaoscarjuliet• 2 years ago

That Venn diagram showing a child coming out from center of two round overlapping circles might be not the best choice, especially when pink color circles are at play when looking for feminine names :-)

P.S. A bit of noise in the data too, some names in Polish/English pairs are not really good.

Hayvok• 2 years ago

I remember hearing about "Daniel in the Lion's Den" and Daniel sitting in flames in church and in my Children's Bible stories.

Minor nitpick, but it was Daniel's three friends who were thrown into the furnace, not Daniel himself.

They are both indeed memorable stories.

xp84• 2 years ago

Shad’rach, Me’shach, and Abed’nego were thrown into the fiery furnace if I remember correctly. (Please forgive any spelling variations)

AlotOfReading• 2 years ago

Gabriel is a conjunction of gabri- (heroic man), and -el (god), roughly translating to "man of God". -el is just a generic proto-semitic word for god that long predates any sort of written language. gabri- is likely related to a well known Aramean king named Gabbār, documented in the Kilamuwa stela alongside his (honorable) god Ba'al SMD. It's entirely possible that there's some recursive etymology here though, as is common with dynastic names.

malingo• 2 years ago

The story of Daniel killing the dragon with hair cakes is also pretty good: https://biblehub.com/catholic/daniel/14-26.htm

danielvf• 2 years ago

A fun article!

I think a more probable understanding of the "Daniel" reference in Ezekiel is that it is same Daniel from the book of Daniel.

Even if you assume that the prophecies in the book of Daniel were written retroactively 600 years later (given the accuracy of described events) it does not preclude an actual powerful person of that name being alive at same time as Ezekiel, and being the basis for later attribution.

Both Ezekiel and Daniel are written covering a similar set of years. Both refer to a person named Daniel widely famous for his "righteousness". It would seem improbable that they were talking about entirely different people.

Again, had a lot of fun reading that.

cess11• 2 years ago

On what grounds do you consider it more likely that an historical person rather than the book of Ezekiel inspired the author of the book of Daniel to use the name? How do you explain the lack of other texts about this person if he was that popular and important?

margalabargala• 2 years ago

How do you explain the lack of other texts about this person if he was that popular and important?

On the contrary, based on the linked article, it seems that there are several works of literature from the time referencing Daniel. In fact, for some languages, it appears that close to 100% of known writing samples reference Daniel (because there are only one or two examples).

MrGilbert2• 2 years ago

Oh, this is really cool. As a "Daniel" myself, I really appreciate the background story of my name.

Sometimes, it's also interesting to get to know the story of how someone got their name. When my mum was younger, there was a really cute little boy my mum really liked when she was on vacation with my grandparents. Not in a romantic way, as he was, like, still a small kid. And she then decided that, when I was born in '86, I should receive his name. I found this super cute, and It's one of those stories that will always remind me of my mum.

dkh• 2 years ago

My wife's grandparents on her father's side were Swedish immigrants to the USA, but her father has never known much at all about the Swedish background. A few years ago my wife got really into the ancestry.com thing, and after doing some digging, discovered that her father's first name is what his family's last name was in Sweden, up until migrating to America. While they took on a different, common last name as many did back then, they passed the old name on in their son. I thought this was fascinating, and so did he, as he never knew any of this, either!

Just another Daniel born in '86 sharing an interesting name origin story. (My own isn't as wild -- my mother loved the Elton John song.)

MrGilbert2• 2 years ago

My own isn't as wild -- my mother loved the Elton John song.

I really like both stories! :)

Archelaos• 2 years ago

For relatively detailed information on the Ugaritic "Danel" and his relation to the Book of Ezekiel, see his Wikipedia article at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Danel

0823498723498722• 2 years ago

Anyone know of any theories regarding the naming of the robot Daneel?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R._Daneel_Olivaw

vundercind3• 2 years ago

Oh wow, don’t encounter Lichtheim too often on most parts of the Web!

There’s a third volume, too. Nb they were released far enough apart that later volumes contain errata for earlier ones (like calling out fraudulent or mistaken dates on some of the works, which errors weren’t discovered until after the volume was printed)

I’ve read them cover to cover. Tried that with single-volume collections of Akkadian and Sumerian literature, but they were way harder to follow—too fragmentary, too little context. Didn’t finish either.

Gilgamesh is amazing though, and easily the best pre-Homeric work I’ve read, zero competitors are even close.

huytersd• 2 years ago

Nonsense, the Mahabharata is definitely a fantastic epic written around 1500BC. Definitely far superior to the Iliad.

vundercind3• 2 years ago

I haven’t made it to the short list (not just one entry!) of Indian works that, by reputation, may been in that same very-good category :-)

I have read a lot more literature from before 1000 BC than most people have, though. That’s just one big blind spot for me, so far.

SamBam3• 2 years ago

I'm not sure how much evidence there is that the actual text of the Mahabharata is anywhere near that old.

Wikipedia says

The bulk of the Mahābhārata was probably compiled between the 3rd century BCE and the 3rd century CE, with the oldest preserved parts not much older than around 400 BCE. [1]

The actual events that it was based on are older. The same article says that the Kurukshetra war was probably around 1000 BCE, and that there may have been events referenced that are older than that.

I don't know that there is accepted evidence that it was written much before 400 BCE, though.

1. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mahabharata

DanielHB3• 2 years ago

As someone named Daniel it is really nice that it is a common name in most European languages and never deviates in spelling. Please people give your children the most boring name possible.

nuxi• 2 years ago

...never deviates in spelling.

In South Slavic languages it's spelled Danijel as well (same pronunciation).

DanielHB3• 2 years ago

oh first time I heard of a different spelling for Daniel, but at least in all the countries I need to do business in it is the same spelling.

SoftTalker2• 2 years ago

Also, and not claiming there is any cause/effect but there is a correlation, at least for men, between short, common names and career success. C-level individuals tend to have short, one-syllable names (or nicknames) like Jack, Fred, Tim, Don, etc.

fuzztester• 2 years ago

Plenty of others have names like that, all the way "down" to the trades.

SamBam3• 2 years ago

The cause and effect is most likely that upper-middle class and upper class white WASP families overwhelmingly tend to prefer those simple boy names.

Tainnor• 2 years ago

I think this might be an anglophone thing. In at least a number of other cultures, you wouldn't use nicknames for figures of authority, and one-syllable names are uncommon in general.

dimmke• 2 years ago

As a fellow Daniel, the spelling doesn't deviate much but the diminutives do.

I live in Mexico and it's Dani here and in many Spanish speaking countries. I go by Dan and that form is pretty much never used so it causes a lot of confusion.

Cool post regardless.

DanielHB3• 2 years ago

The spelling is important so people don't get it wrong when they have to write it down. It can be a bureaucratic nightmare to get this kind of thing fixed sometimes.

For example my birth certificate had a typo in my dad's last name and when I was getting my first ID card I had to go to the notary to get the birth certificate typo fixed before getting the ID card issued. Took half a day of work...

danielodievich• 2 years ago

Apparently my parents didn't know what to name me for about a week and eventually settled on Daniel, in this spelling it was a very unusual name in Soviet Union at the time. I think they liked some famous polish actor https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daniel_Olbrychski.

A more slavic spelling of this is Danilo but it was even less popular than Daniel.

I knew only one other Daniel and he was a son of family's friends and apparently named after me. I didn't much care for him, but that's beside the point.

Coming to USA and it was a bit sad to no longer have a very unique name. It's okay though, my last name is very unique...

pureheartlover• 2 years ago

My mum said she named me after Elton Johns song 'Daniel' - Rumoured to be his long lost gay lover. Thanks mum.

SoftTalker2• 2 years ago

Lyricist Taupin said that the story intends to be about a man, returning to a small-town after the war, who longs to return to the life he had before.

https://americansongwriter.com/daniel-by-elton-john-and-bern...

steve_gh• 2 years ago

What I find most interesting in the origin of the name is the theological context, "Daniel" => Judged by God, indiicating a theological conception that people are accountable to God for their behaviour. Compare this to Greek naming. Even from a slightly later period "Herakles" => Fame of Hera. A different relationship to their god(s).

KingMob• 2 years ago

Really cool article. I'm not sure about one point, though.

In the Torah, both Noah and Job are treated as pious men, but critically, neither are Israelites. Making Daniel part of the trio implies he was also a righteous non-Jew.

Doesn't this confuse being Israelite with being Jewish? IIRC, the kingdom of Israel predates the Jewish religion by a few hundred years, based on older archaeological references to the kingdom's name from neighboring kingdoms.

chalcolithic• 2 years ago

clay tablets are expensive

That's not the first time I hear that. Still can't figure out why it was true.

Ichthypresbyter• 2 years ago

It wasn't.

Clay tablets were not expensive- all you had to do was walk down to the riverbank and grab some clay. What may have been expensive was the services of scribes to write and read those clay tablets- and as they were heavier than papyrus or vellum, moving and storing them was also expensive.

So there was no mass-market literature- that had to wait for printing. What survives are sacred texts, administrative records, and letters related to government or business (like the infamous complaint letter to Ea-Nasir).

But because clay is much cheaper than parchment or even papyrus, what also survives- which doesn't survive in anything like as similar numbers from cultures that wrote on parchment/papyrus AFAIK- is scribal students' exercises, because clay was so easy to get that they would just throw away their completed exercises and pick up a new tablet rather than recycle them.

(One important exception here is birchbark- at Novgorod, in the middle of a vast birch forest, birchbark was almost as cheap as clay in Mesopotamia. So medieval children's doodles [0] on it have survived. Another is papyrus written by the Jewish community of Cairo, who had a religiously-motivated aversion to throwing away or erasing anything written. [1])

This means that we have a lot of copies of the beginning of texts written on clay, as students would copy them out for practice. In contrast, if a text was written on parchment, the middle is more likely to survive as it was less exposed to pests and the elements.

[0] https://lithub.com/onfim-wuz-here-on-the-unlikely-art-of-a-m...

[1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cairo_Geniza

cafard• 2 years ago

There was some old Irish American song I heard that included the lines "Some think it a misfortune to be christened Pat or Dan/But to me it is an honor to be called an Irishman."

I suppose that Daniel O'Connell's fame could have accounted for the popularity of the name among the Irish.

The Tale of Daniel

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