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In the Hebrew scriptures Abraham's name is Avraham and not Abraham (אַבְרָהָם). Is has a v and not a b. The same goes for Rebecca, who is called Rivka in Hebrew. Both v and b sounds are represented by the same letter, the letter ב, but the sound b is represented by the letter with a dot inside (known as dagesh) and then it's called bet, while the sound v is represented by the letter without the dagesh and called vet (Wiki article for the letter). Here is how they look: בּ vs ב.

In Arabic, Abraham is called Ibrahim, also with b, but the Arabic language has no v sound so it's understandable that it's replaced.

What is the source for the change is the sound?

SIMEL
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1 Answers1

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Neither Latin nor Greek (at the time of Biblical) translation had the orthographic means (or need) to represent the contrast be /v/ and /b/. These were the source of the English versions of these names (not the Hebrew). They have been further distorted by letters assigned their English, rather than Latin, values. The result is that many names Hebrew names are pronounced in ways that are unnecessarily far from the original, given the sounds at English speakers’ disposal. Besides the /v/-/b/ neutralization of Abraham, Absalom, Reuben, Job (all with /v/ in Hebrew), there are:

  • all the J-names (Job, Jonah, Jehovah) which have /y/ in Hebrew;

  • those containing v (Eve, David) which was /w/ in the Hebrew;

  • those containing /ð/ (as in English the), for which d substitutes (e.g., Gideon, Gad, the second d of David); and

  • at least some instances of s for sh (e.g., Absalom, Menasse; but, for some reason, in Shem, sh survives fine).

The survival of /θ/ (e.g., Jonathan) might be attributable to Greek, along with ch for Hebrew /x/ (e.g., Enoch).

Daniel Harbour
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    Some corrections on Hebrew names. The Hebrew for Job is not Yob, but Eyov (איוב). Eve is Hawa in Hebrew not Ewe, also, what is represented by w is a very similar sound to v, and today you can't find anyone that differentiates the two, so phonetically speaking David and Hava are more correct than Dawid and Hawa. Gad, Gideon and David, all have only 'd' in their name and not 'th', in fact there is no 'th' sound in Hebrew, that is why many Israelis pronounce "de" instead of "the" and it's a very hard sound for native Hebrew speakers. (Gad - גד, Gideon - גדעון, David - דוד or דויד). – SIMEL Dec 01 '13 at 01:32
  • Wikipedia has something interesting to say on this. – Andrew Lazarus Dec 01 '13 at 02:32
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    @IlyaMelamed. My answer addresses classical pronunciation, not modern. Classical Hebrew had a voiced dental fricative for ד, which the modern language has lost, along with /w/ (now /v/) and many other sounds. Needless to say, the classical pronunciation is what's relevant to the question. Thanks for picking up on the misphrased first bullet point; it now talks just about the Eng. /j/ ~ Heb. /y/ correspondence. So phrased, this concerns only the phonemes in question, and does not imply that Job = Yob or Eve = Ewe: like Absalom, these names diverge in several ways from the Hebrew. – Daniel Harbour Dec 01 '13 at 16:23
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    @PeterShor. I've always been taught (both in a Jewish context and in Oxford/Harvard philology) that the classical pronunciation of the undotted , , was as fricatives, as per the modern undotted = /v/,

    = /f/, = /x/. Andrew's link points in the same direction, but its mention of ejectives for pharyngeals amazes me. I know that that's what happened in Ethiopic, but I've never heard it suggested for Hebrew. Definitely something I'll be following up on!

     – Daniel Harbour Dec 01 '13 at 16:29
  • @DanielHarbour: I'm slightly confused about your comment about Eng. /j/ ~ Heb. /y/ correspondence -- are you referring to the IPA approximations of the English v.s. Hebrew pronunciations? [I'd find that odd, mostly since in the examples you cited with the letter J, contemporary English speakers use /dʒ/ and not /j/, and from my extremely perfunctory knowledge of the Hebrew alphabet and the page Mr. Lazarus cited, /y/ (the first vowel, in, say, chute in French, or trübe in German) doesn't appear in Hebrew, but /j/ does.] – Maroon Jun 25 '15 at 22:12
  • Hmm, that wasn't quite clear, was it? I meant English orthographic is used in names with Hebrew phonetic /j/, which is commonly transcribed as . – Daniel Harbour May 27 '16 at 16:02