20th anniversary of Balashon!

Today is Balashon’s 20th anniversary. I didn’t want to write a typical post about a single word or root, so I’m doing something different: an interview-style Q&A. I’ll ask myself the kinds of questions readers might be curious about - how the blog started, who it was for, what kept it going, what the numbers look like - and answer them as honestly as I can. It’s part nostalgia, part curiosity, and part excuse to share a few surprising stats.

Hard to believe this is real—Balashon is twenty?

Yes. I started Balashon on February 10, 2006. I’m marking the anniversary with something a little different: a quick interview, a little history, and a few stats.

What made you start Balashon in the first place?

I’d been interested in etymology since I was a little kid. And a couple of years before Balashon, I started blogging on a personal blog, just because blogging was what people did then.

The moment those two interests really collided was when I bought a Hebrew slang dictionary shortly before starting Balashon. I remember flipping through it and thinking: this is great. Israeli slang has all these stories and origins, and most people don't know where the phrases come from. Blogging was popular, the barrier to entry was low, and I thought: why don’t I just start?

When you started, who did you think you were writing for?

Honestly, I didn’t know. I assumed there were people out there who would be interested, but I didn’t have a specific audience in mind. It felt like a topic that wasn’t really being covered in the way I wanted to see it covered, so I wrote it partly for myself and partly to fill that gap for whoever might show up.

What did you think the blog would be, and what did it become?

I don’t know if I had a grand plan. In the beginning it was mostly about my own enjoyment: sharing discoveries, making connections, putting sources together, and writing it up for people who shared that interest. Over time it turned into something more stable than I expected - something I still identify with, even as my posting rhythm has changed.

If someone asks you, “What is Balashon?” what do you say?

I usually say it’s a blog about the origin of Hebrew words and phrases: how they relate to each other, how they connect to words in other languages, and how borrowing happens in both directions: Hebrew borrowing from other languages, and other languages borrowing from Hebrew.

And because I write in English, I often end up focusing on connections to English in particular. More broadly, it’s a way of talking about how Hebrew developed from biblical times until today.

What kinds of questions pull you in so much that you can’t let them go?

The ones where I feel like something hasn’t quite been put together yet, but it can be. I’ll find one person saying one thing and someone else saying something else, and it feels like the real story is the connection between them - the piece that nobody bothered to assemble into a complete explanation. When I can make that full connection, those are the posts I most enjoy writing, and most want to share.

When did it hit you that people were actually reading?

When people started coming up to me and asking me questions about Hebrew.

That’s happened for years now: someone will say, “I have a Hebrew etymology question for you,” or “I have a language question.” That was surprising at first. It’s one thing to write something into the ether; it’s another when it becomes part of how people think of you.

Okay, give me the numbers.

A few basic ones:

As of now, Balashon has 713 posts.

Traffic stats are a little split because the tracking changed over the years. In the earlier period I was using Sitemeter, and by that stage the blog already had a few hundred thousand pageviews. Later I relied on Blogger’s built-in stats; those numbers start around 2011, and from then to now Balashon has had 7.41 million pageviews.

That “7.41 million” is still hard for me to picture.

Do you still watch your stats the way people used to in the early blogging era?

Not really. In the early days I checked almost every day—partly curiosity, partly that blogging-era habit. I don’t do that now. But seeing the long arc is still amazing, especially because a lot of blogs that started back then simply stopped. The fact that Balashon is still around, and still attracting readers, feels meaningful.

What posts do people keep finding?

Blogger’s “most popular posts” list (from 2011 onward) is a funny window into what people are looking for. The top post is “ish and isha,” and the rest of the top ten is a mix of topics that people keep stumbling on:

“ish and isha”
“avuka and ptil”
“rubia and lubia”
“gmar”
“arnona”
“pri”
“blo”
“Khartoum and hartumim”
“eshkolit”
“lion”

I like that it isn’t my "greatest hits." It’s more like a record of what people needed explained when they landed on the site.

Does it make sense to you that “ish and isha” is number one?

It does, and it doesn’t. It’s the kind of question people assume has an obvious answer: ish and isha must be related. And the twist is that they aren’t related in the way people think. That counterintuitive element is part of what makes it sticky.

I don’t know exactly what brings people there. Maybe they heard somewhere that they’re not related, and they come looking for the explanation. But I hope they leave with a clearer sense of what the relationship is, and what it isn’t.

Where are readers coming from?

This one still surprises me. Here are the top countries since 2011:

United States — 3.26M
China — 449K
France — 231K
Israel — 193K
Germany — 186K
United Kingdom — 186K
Hong Kong — 150K
Brazil — 143K
Canada — 118K
Other — 2.5M

I don’t have a confident theory for every line in that list. My best guess is that some people are looking for words that appear in multiple languages, or words that mean something in their language and are surprised to find it on a blog about Hebrew. I hope they end up finding something that keeps them reading.

How has the writing process changed over twenty years?

Two big shifts.

First, sources: I have a large library of dictionaries and books, and I still use it, but the amount that’s available online now is enormous. There were times I used to have to go to the library regularly to chase something down. That’s much rarer now.

Second, rhythm: in the beginning I posted constantly. Sometimes almost every day. Over time life got fuller, and the blog moved in and out of intense periods. I remember taking a break around my son’s bar mitzvah. I took breaks while working on my Kohelet book. I’ve also been writing in other venues, which changes the balance.

I’d like to get back to writing on Balashon more regularly, and part of the reason I’m doing this anniversary post is that I’m hoping it nudges me back into that rhythm.

What do you get out of doing this that you wouldn’t get if you just kept private notes?

Sharing, collaboration, and something like participation in the public record.

Early on, a lot of my posts were: I found this in a book, here’s what it says. Over time I started developing my own ideas more - still grounded in sources, but also trying to assemble an argument or a history that wasn’t already laid out cleanly. And there’s something powerful about the idea that someone can search for something - first via Google, now increasingly via AI - and the answer they find may trace back to something I contributed, even if they never knew it was me.

That’s fascinating to me.

So what’s next?

I do hope to return to more regular posting. Every time I find a source (book, journal, website) that might provide interesting information for a post, I add it to my "sources" doc. That doc has over 2300 entries, and even though I've written about some of them, I have many many more to go.

I also have a dream of writing a book connected to Balashon: something with a particular angle that I don’t think has really been done before. I’m not ready to say more yet, but I’m hoping that within the next year or two I’ll be able to share what that looks like.

If someone discovers Balashon today, what do you hope they come away with?

That Hebrew is a fascinating language with a long, continuous history: an evolving, living language.

I hope readers don’t leave thinking Hebrew is purely ancient, frozen in time. And I also hope they don’t leave thinking modern Hebrew is purely new and disconnected. What’s interesting is the continuity: how the language changes, how it adapts, and how it still stays connected across biblical, rabbinic, medieval, and modern layers.

Where should people go if they want more than Balashon?

My homepage has links to other things I’ve written and published, and to the other places I post: https://davidcurwin.com

And to everyone who has read, shared, emailed questions, or simply wandered in from a search result and stuck around: thank you.

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email subscriptions are back

If you’ve been wondering about Balashon email updates, here’s the good news: they’re working again.

I wrote up the background and why this has been complicated here:
https://www.balashon.com/2025/11/email-updates.html

To subscribe now, you can use the subscription box in the sidebar (it uses the same link), or subscribe directly here:

https://blogtrottr.com/?subscribe=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.balashon.com%2Fatom.xml

You’ll enter your email address, choose whether you want each post as it’s published or a digest, and then confirm via email.

I wanted to get email subscriptions working again so that anyone who prefers reading Balashon by email can do that, and now that it’s set up, I hope to start posting again soon.

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email test post

 Just a test.

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email updates?

For many years, I provided the ability to subscribe to Balashon posts via Google FeedBurner. That feature shut down in 2021. I've since switched a few times - including MailerLite and Mailchimp, and most recently "follow.it". All of them have now removed the option for free email subscriptions, and I have not yet found a replacement.

So first of all, you should know that I am aware that there are no email updates. I'm still not back to writing regular posts, but I do hope to soon(ish) and when I do I'd like to make sure that everyone who wants to can read them by email.

Therefore, if anyone is aware of a platform that provides free email updates for blogs (with at least a mention of the post title and link to the latest post - even better more of the post or all of it), please let me know.  Alternatively, if anyone would like to sponsor a paid email subscription service, I would certainly be grateful. Thanks!

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where I've been writing lately

It’s been a while since I’ve posted here on Balashon. But I haven’t stopped writing about Hebrew and language. For some time now, I’ve been publishing a weekly column in HaMizrachi Weekly, where I explore language issues connected to the weekly Torah reading.

You can read the archives and subscribe here:
👉 HaMizrachi Weekly

In addition, I’m working on a new book - more details coming soon!

So while I do hope to continue posting here on Balashon, for regular language insights you can follow my weekly pieces in HaMizrachi.

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ghibli and kibel

The latest viral internet trend is creating AI-generated images in the style of Studio Ghibli. You've very likely seen them by now—or maybe even created some yourself. 

They look something like this:

But did you know there's a connection between Ghibli and a very common Hebrew root?

As noted, the images are inspired by the style of Studio Ghibli, a Japanese animation (anime) studio. The Wikipedia entry gives this explanation for the origin of the studio’s name:

The name "Ghibli" was chosen by Miyazaki from the Italian noun ghibli (also used in English), the nickname of Italy's Saharan scouting plane Caproni Ca.309, in turn derived from the Italianization of the Libyan Arabic name for a hot desert wind (قبلي qibliyy). The name was chosen by Miyazaki due to his passion for aircraft and also for the idea that the studio would "blow a new wind through the anime industry.".Although the Italian word would be more accurately transliterated as "Giburi" (ギブリ), with a hard g sound, the studio's name is written in Japanese as Jiburi.

And where does the name of the wind come from? The Wiktionary entry for ghibli defines it as: "sirocco (a hot, dust-carrying desert wind in North Africa, somewhat similar to the foehn)." The sirocco is a similar type of wind to the hamsin familiar in Israel.

The same entry also provides this etymology:

From Italian ghibli, from the Libyan Arabic form of Standard Arabic قِبْلِيّ (qibliyy, “coming from the qibla”)

And what is the qibla? It is the direction Muslims face when praying toward Mecca, literally meaning "direction." For those in Libya, the qibla would be east, toward Saudi Arabia. The Wiktionary entry notes that the etymology comes from Arabic قِبْلَة (qibla, “that which is opposite”).

And this meaning, "opposite", brings us to the Hebrew root קבל kibel, which as I've written about here previously, also originally meant "opposite":

The root קבל in earlier biblical texts did not mean "receive", but rather "to be opposite", or "before, in front of". From the sense of "opposite" comes the meaning of makbil מקביל - "parallel" or "corresponding", as found in the description of the loops of the tabernacle (Shemot 26:5). As with the previous verb, קבל was also influenced by Aramaic, and so in the later books of the Tanach, came to mean "receive", since a person receiving stands opposite the person giving.

So while it's quite a journey from Japan to the Middle East, we've once again found a connection between a popular modern word and an ancient biblical cognate.

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leitzan and mukion

Let's look at two Hebrew words for clown - לֵיצָן leitzan and מוּקְיוֹן mukion. 

Leitzan is the more common of the two, so we'll start by examining it. It first appears in Rabbinic Hebrew, meaning "scorner, scoffer, mocker, jester." It is parallel to the biblical לֵץ letz, which is both a verb "to scorn, scoff" and also a substantive noun meaning "scorner, scoffer." 

The word letz appears in the opening verse of the book of Tehillim:

אַשְׁרֵי הָאִישׁ אֲשֶׁר  לֹא הָלַךְ בַּעֲצַת רְשָׁעִים וּבְדֶרֶךְ חַטָּאִים לֹא עָמָד וּבְמוֹשַׁב לֵצִים לֹא יָשָׁב׃

"Happy is the man who has not followed the counsel of the wicked, or taken the path of sinners, or sat in the session of scoffers." (Tehillim 1:1)

In a Talmudic commentary on this verse, we can see the transformation from letz to leitzan:

ובמושב לצים לא ישב שלא ישב במושב אנשי פלשתים מפני שלצנים היו

"Nor sat in the seat of the scornful (Psalms 1:1) - this means that Abraham did not sit in the seat of the Philistines, because they were scorners who engaged in jest and buffoonery." (Avoda Zara 19a)

The word letz, in turn, derives from the root ליץ, which also provides the verb hitlotzetz הִתְלוֹצֵץ. That verb originally meant "to act as a scoffer" (as in Yeshaya 28:22), but today means "to joke, to jest."

There is another meaning of ליץ - "to translate, intercede." Klein lists this root as distinct from the one we mentioned earlier. However, the Academy of the Hebrew Language suggests that both roots (ליץ or perhaps לוץ) derive from an earlier meaning "to speak." One sense would have diverged to mocking speech, and the other to translating or interceding speech, like the melitz מֵּלִיץ (interpreter) mentioned in Bereshit 42:23. In the way an ambassador might serve as both a translator and an advocate, the sense of "intercessor" also developed (for example, Iyov 33:23). From here came the verb הִמְלִיץ himlitz - "to recommend".

Let's return to the sense of leitzan as "scoffer, scorner." This negative connotation is clear in another Talmudic passage in Avoda Zara. Again, the Talmud cites Tehillim 1:1, this time to criticize the Roman stadium culture:

ההולך לאיצטדינין ולכרקום וראה שם את הנחשים ואת החברין בוקיון ומוקיון ומוליון ולוליון בלורין סלגורין הרי זה מושב לצים ועליהם הכתוב אומר (תהלים א, א) אשרי האיש אשר לא הלך

With regard to one who goes to stadiums where people are killed in contests with gladiators or beasts, or to a camp of besiegers where different forms of entertainment are provided for the besieging army, and he sees there the acts of the diviners and those who cast spells, or the acts of the clowns known as bukiyon, or mukiyon, or muliyon, or luliyon, or belurin, or salgurin, this is categorized as “the seat of the scornful”; and with regard to such places the verse states: “Happy is the man that has not walked in the council of the wicked, nor stood in the way of sinners, nor sat in the seat of the scornful.” (Avoda Zara 18b)

The Talmud says that one who watches the acts of those various clowns is like one who sits in the seat of the scornful - the letzim. Rashi, in his commentary on the passage, refers to these clowns as leitzanim:

בוקיון מוקיון לוליון סלגריון - כולן מיני ליצנים הן:

Elon Gilad, in this article, notes that neither the Talmudic passage nor Rashi were attempting to present these clowns in a positive light. They were derided negatively, as scoffers. But he suggests that the linkage between leitzan and "clown" (as opposed to simply "scoffer") was due to the immense influence Rashi had. In later medieval culture clowns took on a more positive, entertaining role, and when 19th century writers of early modern Hebrew were looking for a word for clown, leitzan fit the bill.

The Talmudic passage mentioned six types of clowns, but only one of them still is in use today - albeit much smaller than leitzan - the mukion. (The clown term luliyan לוּלְיָן was later adopted for the word "acrobat.") The term mukion, like the previous term bukion, likely refer to the characters Maccus and Buccus, found in the Roman plays known as the Atellan Farce. Maccus and Buccus were both clowns, Maccus being the most popular of the stock characters in those plays. The etymology of Maccus isn't fully clear, but some suggest that it might be related distantly to the English word "mock."

Today mukion is rarely used, but when it is, it will refer to a professional or artistic role of an actual performing clown, while a leitzan can also refer to anyone who is joking around or acting foolishly. 

One more Hebrew word should be mentioned in this discussion. In Tehillim 73:8, we find the root מיק (or מוק) in its only appearance in the Tanakh:

יָמִיקוּ וִידַבְּרוּ בְרָע עֹשֶׁק מִמָּרוֹם יְדַבֵּרוּ׃

"They scoff and plan evil; from their eminence they plan wrongdoing."

As with any word that only appears once in Biblical Hebrew, it's not easy to pin down its meaning. But most translations say it means "to scoff" or "to deride." Linguists suggest that it comes from Aramaic influence, where the cognate root has a similar meaning. In fact, the Aramaic Targum to Tehillim 1:1 translates letzim as מְמִקְנֵי memiknei, from that same root. So too does the Targum translate the verb ליץ in Mishlei 9:12 as מֵמִיק memik.

While the Hebrew root לוץ certainly has a parallel in the Aramaic מוק, there doesn't seem to be strong evidence that מוק is the root of mukion (and certainly not Maccus). It's likely just a coincidence, but one that may have strengthened the impression at the time that the mukion clown was also a scoffer.

 

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