Divinity Atlas

Sacred Correspondences
Articles

Hayl, Power, and Half of an Emperor's Name

Citation Formats

General Reference

APA Style

BibTeX

Learn More
Hayl, Power, and Half of an Emperor's Name

Hayl, the Ge'ez word for power or strength, is spelled with this letter in the classical orthography, and it is the first element of the regnal name Haile Selassie, the power of the Trinity. The second element begins with sawt. Two letters of the fidel, both of them letters whose classical sound no modern Amharic reader makes, open the two halves of a name that became one of the most widely recognised in the world.

The name is a compound of the type Ethiopian regnal and baptismal names are commonly built from, a noun in the construct state followed by a divine name or title, giving the power of the Trinity, the gift of Mary, the servant of the Cross. The pattern is productive and it is old, and comparable patterns run through the Hebrew and Arabic naming traditions, which is what one would expect of three branches of one family.

Harm is also one of the letters heading a labiovelar series, a set of signs written with a rounded lip quality, which the character standard treats as rows of their own. The atlas counts the twenty-six plain letters and treats the labiovelars as an extension of the grid, which is how the fidel is taught. A reader working with Ethiopian manuscripts or with Unicode will meet them, and their absence from the count here is not a claim that they do not exist.

Cross-Tradition Connections

Article On

Sources
Comments (0)
No comments yet. Be the first to share a thought.
Reader Challenges (0 open reader challenges)
No disputes yet. Spotted an error or a better source? Open the first one.

View At A Past Year

The atlas records no dated fact of its own for this entry, so there is no other year to choose.