names of Yosef

Where the authorities disagree

What avreich means (Bereishis 41:43). Three readings, and Rashi carries all three.

1. Father to the king. Targum Onkelos does not leave the word untranslated at all: dein abba l'malka, "this is the father to the king." Rashi's first explanation follows, parsing avreich as av plus reich, king. Our texts of Rashi say reich is Aramaic for king, but no such Aramaic word exists; it is generally agreed that a mistake crept into our versions and that Rashi should be read as saying reich means king in Latin. The Latin word does appear in the Gemara: opposing Herod's plan to refurbish the Beis HaMikdash, the emperor warns that on account of his questionable lineage he is "neither a reicha nor the son of a reicha" (Bava Basra 4a). The column adds that Latin reggio/rex means king, from the Proto-Indo-European root reg-, making it a cognate of German reich, kingdom or empire, and of a whole bevy of English words, among them raj, royal, regal, regius, reign, regent, rector, director and prerogative; it also underlies the names Regina, Reginald, Reinhold, Ronald, Rhona, Richard, Heinrich, Hendrik, Aldrich, Rodriguez, Patrick, Derek, Fredrich, Imre and Emmerich, the last of which has as its Italian equivalent the name of Amerigo Vespucci, for whom the Americas are named.
2. A father in wisdom, young in years. Bereishis Rabbah 90:3 and Sifrei Devarim 1 split it as av plus rach (soft, young), setting Yosef's surpassing wisdom against his youth. This is the source of the modern use of avreich for a young man in kollel.
3. One before whom all kneel. Others in Sifrei Devarim 1 take it from ב-ר-כ, berech, a knee. The Taz in Divrei Dovid notes why: these authorities rejected splitting the name into two words at all, so they needed a single root. Targum Yonasan synthesizes the first and third readings.

The Bottom line leaves avreich transliterated in narrative and glosses it by whichever mefaresh the passage is following.

Whether Tzafnas Paneach reveals or conceals. Bereishis Rabbah 90:4 gives four readings; three take tzafnas from צ-פ-נ, hidden. On paneach there is less agreement. The Midrash's own reading combines פ-ע (appearing) with נ-ח (easing or placating): Yosef unravels hidden matters easily, or he settles people's questions by disclosing what was hidden. Rashi (to Bereishis 41:45) therefore renders "revealer of mysteries." The Chasam Sofer reverses it: "concealer of mysteries," for Yosef's undertaking to keep secret that Pharaoh could not speak Lashon HaKodesh (Sotah 36b). Later Hebrew, in Nishmas and in HaKallir's piyyutim, uses paneach as a verb for deciphering, which may simply follow the Midrash.

Whether Yosef and Yehosef are one name or two. Rabbi Chaim Kanievsky is reported to have first held them distinct, so that a father could name one son Yosef and another Yehosef; he later retracted and ruled that for naming siblings and for shidduchim they be treated as one name. Rabbi Mordechai Gross of Bnei Brak leaves it in doubt. The two spellings also stand side by side in the Mikdash: Rambam (Hilchos Klei HaMikdash 9:9) has Yehosef on the shoham stones of the Kohen Gadol's shoulders while the choshen reads Yosef (see Minchas Chinuch 99).

When Yosef became Yehosef. Sotah 10b and 36b: the hei was added when the angel Gavriel came to teach him the seventy languages, not at the moment of the test. Rabbi Levi Yitzchak of Berditchev infers from the piyyut Even Choger (Shacharis, first day of Rosh HaShanah) that he was Yehosef already in the womb. He reconciles them with Niddah 30b: the unborn child is taught the whole Torah by an angel, and all seventy languages are contained in Torah, so the name fit him then; birth made him forget, and Gavriel restored him to Yehosef.

Whether rach can mean "king." The plain sense everywhere is soft, tender, or young. A minority school reads a second rach, cognate with reich: Sefer Russiana and, independently, the Pittsburgher Rebbe (Emunas Avraham) on Leah's eyes as rakos (Bereishis 29:17), against Rashi there, who reads them soft from weeping; Targum Yonasan on David's "I am today rach and anointed king" (Shmuel II 3:39), which it renders "I am today like a commoner who will grow up to be king," and from which Radak implies that Targum took rach for king; Rabbi Chaim Vital (Pri Eitz Chaim, Shaar HaYichudim ch. 19) on harakah, the pampered woman of Devarim 28:56; and Rashi (to Shabbos 53a) explaining the amora Shmuel's nickname Aryoch as royal, the rach of it being the Latin for king, since he was expert in civil law and in that role functioned in a way resembling a king, though Rashi elsewhere (Menachos 38b) derives Aryoch from aryeh, the lion to which Yehudah is compared (Bereishis 49:9). The name Aryoch is borne in Tanach by the king of Elasar, one of the four kings Avraham fought (Bereishis 14:1, 14:9), and by a minister of Nevuchadnetzar (Daniel 2:4, 2:15, 2:24-25). The Bottom line keeps "soft" and treats the royal reading as a derashah to be flagged, not assumed.