Armstrong

🏷  English Semitic pun spook name · name   —   by Gerry · May 2019 · 824 words

The strange yet common aristocratic name Armstrong seems to be a pun-translation of Yzreel, which means “lordly offspring”: זרע zrˁ means “arm” & “offspring”, אל ˀl means “strong” & “lord”, so both together mean “arm-strong” but also “offspring-of-lords”. And Yzreel seems to one of many homonyms for Israel, which in turn puns with “veiled ruler”.

In a nutshell

Armstrong as an aristocratic name

Miles has already analyzed Lance Armstrong, Neil Armstrong and George Armstrong Custer, and outed them as spooks & frauds.

But of course there are many more Armstrongs. Since they’re legion, I’ll only list the aristocrats here. Wikipedia has the following entries for official aristocrats named Armstrong:

There must be many, many more aristocratic Armstrongs though, since as of ThePeerage.com lists a whopping 692 people in the British peerage named Armstrong, plus a great number of variants.

Armstrong as a pun-translation of “godseed”

Armstrong may have been an actual regular name in Europe, but there must be an additional explanation why so many crypto-aristocrats like it. It may be a translation pun.

The Semitic root זרע zrˁ means “arm”, “seed”, “offspring”, “grain”. The common denominator is likely that all these things are outgrowths that branch off from something else.

The Semitic root אל ˀl is sometimes translates as “strong”, but mostly means “God” or “gods”, and is also used for powerful human lords, all of which are “strong” in a sense. Most famously, it is the root of the Semitic names Elohim and Allah for God.

Together, these 2 roots form the compound זרע-אל zrˁ-ˀl zera-el. With a Y prefix, this is the Biblical name Jezreel / Yzreel which officially means “God sows”. But it can also be translated into “arm-strong”, “god-seed”, and also “descendant of lords”, as ˀl el stands for both gods & human lords.

The name Armstrong as “arm-strong” can therefore be explained as a pun-translation of Yzreel meaning “god-seed” & “offspring of lords”. This is what the spook-aristocrats are: descendants of the god-overlords of ancient times.

Armstrong = arm-strong = zrˁ-ˀl = Yzreel / seed-god / offspring-lord / descendant of lords

Yzreel ≈ Israel = yšr-ˀlˀzr-ˀl = veiled ruler

(I once suspected Yzreel to be the primary pun behind Israel, but it turned out there were many more.)

Hebrew zrˁ = arm, offspring; ˀl = strong, lord

זרוע zrwˁ zeroa : arm, shoulder, strength — Old Hebrew (Strong)

זרע zrˁ zera : sowing, seed, offspring, children, descendants, family, grain, intercourse, seminal — Old Hebrew (Strong)

אל ˀl el : God, god, gods, mighty, Mighty One, power, strong; applied to men of might and rank — Old Hebrew (Strong)

יזרעאל yzrˁˀl Yzreel : “God sows,” two Israelites, also two cities in Israel, also a valley in Northern Israel — Old Hebrew (Strong)

ישראל yšrˀl Yisrael : “God strives,” another name of Jacob and his descendants — Old Hebrew (Strong)

🏷  English Semitic pun spook name · name