“Boutros Boutros-Ghali! What a name, eh?”
“It’s actually really interesting. Boutros is the Arabic form of the name Peter, from the Greek Petros. There’s no p sound in Arabic, so it became a b.”
“I never knew that! And what does Ghali mean?”
“Pumpkin-eater.”
A bit too culturally insensitive to air on NPR today, I know, but the nineties were a better time.
In yesterday’s post “Come and buy pumpkins,” William Wright mentions that he used to sell pumpkins for two dollars each but that now they’re three thanks to inflation. He links my post “A loaf of bread is dear” and reiterates that dear, which usually means “beloved,” can also mean “expensive.” (The Russian word for “dear” exhibits the same range of meanings, as I point out in my post.) So William’s pumpkins are dearer than they used to be.
Ghali obviously doesn’t really mean “pumpkin-eater,” so what does it mean? It means “expensive, precious, dear, beloved.”
Boutros Boutros-Ghali was a Coptic Christian, which explains how he ended up with the Arabic version of the name of a Christian saint. My 2011 “bread is dear” dream included a reference to the Coptic language. Saint Peter is considered by Catholics to have been the first pope. The second pope was Linus, a name we today associate with the Great Pumpkin.
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