(no subject)

[jack]

Random internet hole of the day. Algol is the head of Medusa in the Perseus constellation, and elsewhere was the head of an ogre.

In arabic that's "Ra's Al Ghul", where the name Algol came from, and also where the name of the batman villain Ra's Al Ghul.

It seems "ghul" in Arabic referred to dangerous desert spirits. In some versions they seem to be more like Jinn, in others they're graveyard dangers.

But it's really hard to find anyone who knows anything and isn't repeating the same two facts as everyone else. When I tried to see how the legend changed I got to jstor and gave up. Where do you look more deeply? Is there a subreddit for this that avoids batman things?

At some some legend was translated into European languages and gave rise to the western concept of ghouls, which seem to vary but seem to always be associated with dead bodies and never with shapeshifting or mysticism. Roleplaying solidified this.

The star was named "Ra's al Ghul". Apparently it's "Head of Satan" in hebrew tradition, although I don't know when that was, I guess it was almost-AD-or-later when Satan had acquired "monster" connotations? Not from earlier when it meant "the tricksy prosecutor angel" not yet "the ultimate antagonist"? The batman villain was named after the arabic name of the star.

What I don't know:
* What was and wasn't in middle eastern ghul legends
* The "head of the ogre" sounds really similar to "the head of medusa". Is this an arabic translation of the greek name "head of the monster", or are they both named after an older legend that diverged in both cultures?
* When they named the batman villain did "Ra's al Ghul" have mystical connotations? Was that based on something or did it just sound mystical to a western writer who only knew the name? What about other fantasy references to "al ghul"?

Comments

[simont]

* Does any of this have anything to do with ALGOL?

[jack]

I assume the programming language was named to sound like the star but Wikipedia doesn't say so. It does say it was named as a portmanteau of Algorithmic and Language. Gorithm comes eventually from Khiva, influenced by arithmos. But ALGOL and Ra's Al Ghul both contain "of".

[simont]

Yes, the official and real reasons for names are often at odds in that kind of way, especially in the "backronym" style where first we decided what we'd most like to call it, and then thought of something we could pretend that stood for!

[jack]

Rachel says, probably the Arabic (and later Hebrew and European names) are all translations by Arabic astronomers of constellations named after Greek legends, not names based on related legends.

Which makes sense -- people are talking about the name, no-one is talking about any Arabic or Hebrew collection of constellations featuring a "Hero and the Ogre" legend