Samson

Samson’s puns in a nutshell

That Samson should mean “sun” makes no sense, because there’s no relation to that in the story. But because Samson’s riddle has “hidden leaders” for an answer, we can assume Samson’s name means something like that as well.

In the literal story, Samson’s superhuman strength comes from his locks. Real-life locks don’t give you strength, so the 2 may be linked through a pun. In Samson’s story, the word used for “locks” is ḥlp for “twisted around” (think “caliph”). The word used for “strength” is kḥ for “power” (think “Koch brothers”).

But there’s also the letter combo ṣm (not used in the story), which has both meanings “strength” & “locks”, and is also similar to Samson:

• Samson is very strong, because עצם ˁṣm means “strength” & “power” (think “Osama”).
• Samson is a leader, because עצם ˁṣm is in Daniel 8:24 even translated as “mighty men” & “powerful leaders”.
• Samson’s strength comes from his locks, because צם ṣm / צמצם ṣmṣm means “locks”.
• Samson is thirsty after fighting in the desert, because צמא ṣmˀ means “thirst” & “desert”.
• Samson is tortured in captivity, perhaps because צמי ṣmy means “making suffer”.
• Samson meets a lion, because Arabic ˀsˀm means “lion”.
• Samson meets bees, because zmzm / zmm means “humming”.
• Samson is a spook symbol, because צם ṣm / צמצם ṣmṣm also means “veiling oneself”.

As to the pun similarity:

• All these meanings occur either in Samson’s story, or in the spook story beneath.
• The words also sound similar to Samson, since Tsade is pronounced close to Shin (both are fricatives).
• To get the N, you can simply add the grammar suffix -n which means “X person”.
• To get the N in another way, you can add the suffix שן šn for “disguise”.

Hebrew / Aramaic ṣm for “locks” & “veil”, ˁṣm for “strength”

The punny similarity is strongest in Hebrew & Aramaic: Both ˁṣm for “strength” & “power” and ṣm for “locks” & “veil” are spelled with ṣm.

(Interestingly, Klein derives ṣmṣm for “veil” from ṣmm for “pressing” & “drawing together”. So, in an archaic sense it may even be loosely related to ˁṣm for “power” & “force”. We’ll also find some evidence for that in Egyptian.)

Arabic ḍmd for “bandage” & “patch”, ˁẓm for “power” & “aristocracy”

In Arabic, the 2 roots seem to surface as ˁẓm for “power” & “aristocracy”, and ḍmd for “bandage” & “patch”. This is in tune with Daniel’s “mighty men”, and Klein’s derivation from “pressure”. The homonymity is mostly gone though, because Arabic differentiates more phonemes than Hebrew.

Egyptian ṯȝm for “cloak” & “veil”, ṯmȝ for “strength”

The word roots of Samson’s pun also exist in Egyptian, where they are also very alike. They are also still somewhat similar to the Semitic forms.

Samson’s name as a compound

Samson’s name can be read as a compound, either as צמצן ṣmṣ-n for “veiled one”, or as צם שן ṣm-šn for “veil of disguise”. Both are likely intended spook meanings.

The -n suffix in Samson is likely just the regular Hebrew agent noun suffix. Like English -er (but not used as often), it means “person who is X”.

• עצמן ˁṣm-n would mean “someone who is strong” or “someone who leads” (as in Osman).
• צמן ṣm-n / צמצמן ṣmṣm-n would mean “someone who has locks” or “someone who veils himself”.

However, the spook authors opted to disguide Samson’s name as “sun”, written with Shin. That is the spelling of the number 2, which also means “disguise”. The name Samson can thus also be interpreted as צם שן ṣm-šn, with the following pun meanings:

• צם שן ṣm-šn means “locks of disguise”.
• צם שן ṣm-šn also means “veil of disguise”.
• עצם שן ˁṣm-šn means “disguised power”, but can also be interpreted as “the disguise is the power”.

(Interestingly, šmš for “sun” is also the spelling of šmš for “servant” (the Yiddish Shammes), derived from Egyptian šms. But since the spooks think of themselves as “leaders”, not “servants”, I don’t think that’s the intended pun.)

Sampson with P from ṣˁp for “veil”

The name Samson is often written as Sampson or Simpson, with a P. That is not found in the Biblical Hebrew spelling. It is, however, found in the pun: In Hebrew, both צם ṣm and צעף ṣˁp mean “veil”, the latter derived from “doubling”. The spooks like to invent new name variants to conceal the fact that they’re all from the same mesh of families, so it seems some mixed the M and the P synonyms here, into Sampson.

Samson as pun with ˀsˀm for “lion” and zmzm for “humming [bee]”

Among the 1000s of “hidden leader” puns, the one with the lion & the bees was chosen specifically for Samson’s story, because Semitic synonyms for both animals also pun with Samson: Arabic ˀsˀmʰ means “lion”, and Hebrew zmzm imitates a “buzzing” sound, such as from bees.