Caesar

🏷  Latin castro hidden ruler pun spook name · name   —   by Gerry · May 2020 · 538 words

The unexplained name Caesar seems related to the “caesarean” cut, the caesura, and to the Semitic root קצר qṣr for “cutting” & “cutting off”. One multi-lingual derivation is Latin castro for a (cut-off) “palace”, which is also spelled קצר qṣr in Semitic dialects.

Latin caesurus for “cutting down”, cessero for “retiring”

In both Latin & Semitic, words using the word stems cease / qṣ, or R-suffixed caesura / qṣr, are related to “cutting”, “separating”, “stopping”.

Julius Caesar retired with a world-famous fake assassination by stabbing. Oddly, his name Caesar is very similar to Latin words for “retiring” and “stabbing”, with grammar forms like caesūrus for “about to cut down”, and with cessero, meaning something like “I will have retired” or “I will have vanished”. It’s thus possible that his name Caesar is in fact a spooky stage name, chosen for this event. But more likely, it was be the other way round, i.e. he chose to “retire” with a faked “cutting down”, because that’d match his actual name best and make it even more memorable & immortal. Either way, it’s not a coincidence that his name Caesar matches the most famous event in his life. In fact, the story of Caesar’s assassination frequently uses variants of caedo / caesurus to refer to the alleged assassination.

Later royalty names, especially Castro, probably refer more to the palace in the meaning of aristocracy.

English, Latin cease = stop; caesura = cut, separation

cease : to stop; to stop doing (something); to be wanting; to fail; to pass away; From Middle English cesen, cessen, from Middle French cesser (“to cease”), from Latin cessō (“leave off”), frequentative of cēdō (“to leave off, go away”) — English (Wikt)

caesūra : a cutting, felling, hewing down; a pause in a verse, caesura — Latin (Wikt)

cēdō; cesserō; cesseris : withdraw, depart, retire, go away from; disappear, pass away, vanish — Latin (Wikt)

Caesar as pun with “secrecy”

As can be seen from caesura and caedo, Latin word roots are short, and the R is not part of the core root.

Since many spook names are puns with “hidden-ness” of some kind, this means that Caesar may at the same time be a pun with caesus for “secret” & “hidden” things, and caeco for “obscuring” & “confusing”. With the trailing R, the name may even be interpreted as “obfuscator”.

Latin caecus, caeco = obscure, confuse, hidden, secret

caecus; caecarum : not seeing, blind; that cannot be seen; that cannot be known; invisible, concealed, hidden, secret, obscure, dark; that obstructs the sight; not transparent, opaque — Latin (Wikt)

caeco; caecare : blind; obscure, confuse, hide; morally blind — Latin (LSJ.gr)

Caesar as Latin castra for “palace”

Latin, Semitic castra, qṣr = castle, palace

castrum : castle, fort, fortress; (chiefly plural) camp, especially a military camp — Latin (Wikt)

קצרא qṣrˀ : castle; Arabic qaṣr — Aramaic (CAL)

קצרה qṣrh : fort, castle; Latin castra (= fortified camp), (whence also Syriac קַסְטְרָא (= fortified place, fort, castle). Arabic qaṣr (= castle, palace) is borrowed from Hebrew קַצֽרָה Latin castrum originally meant ‘that which has been cut out’, from *kastrom (= a cutting tool), whence also Latin castrāre (= to cut, geld), which is probably cognate with Old Italian śásati, śásti (= cuts), śástram (= knife), Greek keazin (= to split). — Hebrew (Klein)

🏷  Latin castro hidden ruler pun spook name · name