princess

Distinctions

sar (שר) and serarah (שררה)

The base word: prince, officer, minister. Rabbi Shlomo Pappenheim (Cheshek Shlomo) traces it, sin and samech interchanging, to the two-letter ס-ר, removal, and to its branch asirah, imprisonment, which removes a man's freedom to move; a sar is so called because his authority limits how those under him may move and act. The abstract noun serarah, rulership, is the word Chazal use in explaining the name Sarah.

Sarai (שרי)

Her name for the first five and a half parshiyos of Bereishis, seventeen times from Bereishis 11:29 until Bereishis 17:15. Berachos 13a (with Tosefta Berachos 1:14 and Bereishis Rabbah 47:1): Sarai means she was a princess to her own nation. Rashi (to Berachos 13a and Bereishis 17:15): the final yod carries the sense of the first-person possessive, "my princess," and that is what limits her. Maharal (Tiferes Yisrael ch. 49): the yod is orthographically the smallest letter, so ending a name in it implies diminution and limitation, while the final hei of Sarah implies expansion and growth. In the Septuagint the name runs Sara and then Sarra, and Philo of Alexandria reads that change the same way, from Avraham's personal princess to a princess in general, the later name relating to serarah, which the column notes is not unlike the Gemara's derashah. Abarbanel offers a similar reading: her parents named her Sarai for her destiny as the lady of one special man, and Hashem renamed her to stress her specialness in her own right. Likewise Rabbi Shlomo Astruc: mistress of her own household, then mistress of the world. Maharsha (to Berachos 13a) reads it as duration rather than extent: as Sarai her standing would end with her life, having no child to carry it, while Sarah was destined to bear Yitzchak and so to rule past her own lifetime. Rabbi David Luria, on Bereishis Rabbah 47:1, reads "do not call her name Sarai" as "do not think it is you who confer the name," that is, her prominence is not derived from being Avraham's wife; her husband is crowned by her, not she by him.

Sarah (שרה)

Her name thirty-eight times through the rest of Bereishis, and once more in all of Tanach, at Yeshayahu 51:2. On the yod that was taken away, two traditions (Yerushalmi Sanhedrin 2:6, Sanhedrin 107a, Bereishis Rabbah 47:1): that the yod (ten) was halved into two heis (five each), one going to Avram to make Avraham and one to Sarai to make Sarah; and that the yod protested its removal and was answered by being set at the head of Hoshea's name to make Yehoshua (Bamidbar 13:16), moving from last letter of a righteous woman's name to first letter of a righteous man's. Rabbi Shmuel David Luzzatto (to Bereishis 17:15) sets the change in the pattern of a commoner given a new name on rising to greatness: Yosef to Tzafnas Paneach (Bereishis 41:45), Hoshea to Yehoshua (Bamidbar 13:16), Matanyahu to Tzidkiyahu (Melachim II 24:17), Daniel, Chananyah, Mishael and Azaryah renamed by Nevuchadnetzar at Daniel 1:7. He also suggests that the added hei signifies femininity and was given to both names as a sign of fertility and procreation, as Kli Yakar there explains similarly.

Shadal further writes that the name Sarah is related to an Arabic word shara, which apparently means having many children. The column reports that its friends Rabbi Yosef Kerman and Rabbi Shaul Goldman are unsure which Arabic word Shadal meant. Rabbi Goldman suggests zara, sowed, seeded, planted, or dhara, grain, seed, produce, but then wonders why Shadal reached for Arabic at all when the Hebrew zera, seed or offspring, would have made the same point. Rabbi Goldman observes that the root ז-ר-ע behind zera may be seen as related to ש-ר-ה, the letters of the name Sarah, since sin interchanges with zayin and hei with ayin. Rav Hirsch (to Bereishis 17:15) does compare ש-ר-ה with ז-ר-ע, and reads the change as her passing from an isolated figure to one embodying moral leadership for all, the role every daughter of Yisrael aspires to emulate; the interchange rationale, though, is Rabbi Goldman's and not his.

Yiscah (יסכה)

Named once only, Bereishis 11:29, as a daughter of Haran, and never mentioned again in Tanach. An ancient tradition preserved in Seder Olam Rabbah ch. 2, Megillah 14a, Sanhedrin 69b and Targum Yonasan, and by Josephus (Antiquities of the Jews, Book I ch. 6), identifies her with Sarai. Rabbeinu Nissim proves it from the pasuk's shape: the Torah gives Milkah's paternity but not Sarai's, which is only reasonable if Sarai is the Yiscah whose father the pasuk has just named. Baal HaTurim, Peirush HaRokeach and Rabbeinu Efrayim bar Shimshon (to Bereishis 11:29) find it in At-Bash: שרה becomes בגצ, whose gematria matches יסכה, ninety-five. Ibn Ezra and Rabbi Shmuel David Luzzatto (to Bereishis 11:29) doubt the identification.

On the name itself, the Gemara gives two readings, both seemingly from ס-כ-ה, to gaze in Rabbinic Hebrew (a root Rabbi Eliyahu HaBachur's Meturgeman shows the Targumim using to render habatah, hashkafah, tzofeh, shur and hover): she gazed (sachta) with ruach hakodesh, or all gazed (sachin) at her beauty. Dr. Alexander Kohut (HeAruch HaShaleim) likewise connects that root to the Gemara's derashah, and theorizes further that it may perhaps be of Indo-European stock, related to the German schauen, to look, the Sanskrit sku and the English see. Rabbi Avraham Abba Herczl (Sifsei Chachamim to Megillah 14a, a different work from Rabbi Shabsai Bass's supercommentary of the same name) seems to follow the same line but takes the root as ס-כ-ל, of histakel; he then suggests that perhaps the Gemara meant sukkah, a hut or covering, for her extreme modesty in covering over her prophetic level rather than showing it off, and that perhaps its second reading means that people spoke (sichah, with a ches) of her superlative beauty rather than stared at it. Rashi (to Bereishis 11:29) adds a further sense: Yiscah from nesichah, princess, as Sarah is from serarah; Rabbi Eliyahu Benamozegh (Eim LaMikra Eim LaMesores) and Rabbi Yaakov Emden (Eim LaBinah there) argue from that very affinity of meaning that one woman bore both names, and see Rabbi Shabsai Bass's Sifsei Chachamim on why Rashi felt the need to add a sense the Gemara does not give. Rabbi Yosef Chaim of Baghdad (Ben Yehoyada to Sanhedrin 69b, Benayahu to Megillah 14a) joins the Gemara's two: in her youth the name marked her beauty, and in maturity it emerged as marking her nevuah; the Torah otherwise avoids the name because, for all its positive sense, it also implies an undue focus on outward beauty, against the ideals of tznius, and might give the reader the wrong impression of her. The column adds two explanations it found on its own. Rabbi Aharon Marcus (Keses HaSofer to Bereishis 11:29) notes that having more than one name, one from childhood and another taken on after marriage, is a well-attested phenomenon in the Ancient Near East, so Yiscah was her childhood name, Sarai her name from her marriage, and Sarah the name Hashem gave her in her late eighties. Rabbi Moshe Sofer, the Chasam Sofer (Toras Moshe to Bereishis 23:5): Yiscah was her Aramaic name, Sarai and Sarah her Hebrew one.

the name in English

The English Jessica, which first appears in Shakespeare's The Merchant of Venice as the name of Shylock's daughter, is generally understood by onomasts as an Anglicization of Yiscah. Professor Grant W. Smith of Eastern Washington University argues otherwise, that the name comes from falconry: "jess strings" are the straps tethering a falcon's legs to its master, from the Old French gesse and ultimately the Latin jactus, throw or cast, and the -ica is a Latin feminine nominative ending as in Judaica and Hebraica, so that Shakespeare, who referred to falconry often, coined the name for a girl who feels trapped under her father's control. The column allows that as an intriguing layer of wordplay but maintains the simpler derivation from Yiscah, since English Bibles before Shakespeare already rendered the name "Jescha" (Wycliffe) and "Jisca" (Coverdale), and since other obscure names in the play come from Bereishis as well, Shylock having been argued to come from Shelach (Bereishis 10:24), and Tuball and Chus from other names there.

The name Sarah has produced a long line of derivatives: the given names Sari, Suri, Szori, Sarolta, Zara, Serita and Serl; the English Sadie, which began as a nickname for Sarah, the "sar-" sound softening to "sad-" with an endearing "-ie"; and Sally, on the English pattern of swapping r for l in diminutives, as Harry gives Hal, Mary Molly, and Dorothy Dolly. Several Jewish surnames look related as well, Shore, Sirkes, Sharlin and Sarles. (The columnist recalls a girl in his grade at Emek Hebrew Academy named Sara Sarles.) Some have argued that the Hungarian surname Soros belongs here too, while others tie it instead to Schorsch, a Germanized form of George.

Rendering guidance

• Bereishis 17:15: "Sarai your wife, you shall not call her name Sarai, for Sarah is her name." Keep both forms in transliteration. If a passage needs the sense rendered, gloss once: Sarai, "my princess," against Sarah, "princess" outright. Do not translate the names in the pasuk itself.
• Trap: an English "Sarah" for both. Every derashah on the change (the yod split into two heis, the yod moving to Yehoshua's name, Rashi's possessive) needs the two spellings visible in English; a translation that harmonizes them makes the drashos unreadable.
• שר: "prince" or "officer" by context, not "minister" in a Chumash setting, which sounds governmental. שררה: "rulership," not "authority," which is too thin for what Berachos 13a is claiming for her.
• יסכה: transliterate as Yiscah, and gloss with the reading the passage is using, "the one who gazed" for the ruach hakodesh reading, "the one all gazed upon" for the beauty reading. Do not render the name as "Jessica" in a frum text, even though the column holds that Jessica is in fact an Anglicization of Yiscah; the English name carries none of the pasuk's sense and reads as a modern given name.
• Where a source treats Yiscah and Sarai as one woman, do not add "that is, Sarah" into the translation; Ibn Ezra and Rabbi Shmuel David Luzzatto hold otherwise, and the identification belongs in a note.

Sources

Rabbi Reuven Chaim Klein, "Lech Lecha: The Princess' Gaze (Part 1/2)," 8 Cheshvan 5785 (2024-11-09), and "Vayera: The Princess' Gaze (Part 2/2)," 15 Cheshvan 5785 (2024-11-16), What's in a Word?, Ohr Somayach; raw texts at sources/whats-in-a-word/raw/11580-lech-lecha-the-princess-gaze-part-12.md and sources/whats-in-a-word/raw/11581-vayera-the-princess-gaze-part-22.md. Primary loci cited: Bereishis 11:29, 17:15, 23:5, 41:45; Yeshayahu 51:2; Bamidbar 13:16; Melachim II 24:17; Daniel 1:7; Berachos 13a with Rashi and Maharsha; Tosefta Berachos 1:14; Bereishis Rabbah 47:1 with Rabbi David Luria; Yerushalmi Sanhedrin 2:6; Sanhedrin 107a and 69b; Megillah 14a; Seder Olam Rabbah ch. 2; Targum Yonasan to Bereishis 11:29; Maharal, Tiferes Yisrael ch. 49; Kli Yakar and Rav Hirsch to Bereishis 17:15; Shadal to Bereishis 11:29 and 17:15; the Septuagint with Philo of Alexandria; Josephus, Antiquities of the Jews Book I ch. 6; Dr. Alexander Kohut, HeAruch HaShaleim; Rabbi Eliyahu HaBachur, Meturgeman; Rabbi Avraham Abba Herczl, Sifsei Chachamim to Megillah 14a, which is a different work from Rabbi Shabsai Bass's Sifsei Chachamim on Rashi, both of which the article cites; Rabbi Yosef Kerman and Rabbi Shaul Goldman on Shadal's Arabic comparison; Professor Grant W. Smith on Jessica, with Wycliffe and Coverdale; Bereishis 10:24 for Shelach.

Two slips in the article are corrected rather than repeated. Part 1 opens by placing Sarai's introduction at "Genesis 12:29"; the pasuk is Bereishis 11:29, as the second part gives it. Part 1 also writes that "the letter HEY went from being the last letter in the name of a righteous woman to being the first letter in the name of a righteous man"; the letter that moved is the yod.

Nothing the article cites is omitted.