4 KudoZ points awarded for this answer. Comment: "Firstly, I would like to thank everyone for his/her contribution. I have chosen Robert Forstag's entry, because it offers the least controversy and the most agreement. In addition, his entry evoked very useful links that were an important part of my criteria for grading. This said, I must object to Robert's comment that the etymology of a name and those who bare the name historically are separate issues. For example, one can well imagine that a Stanford graduate did not choose his name simply because it sounded more Hebrew. In short, the historical roots of Ehud Barak's chosen family name are unlikely a coincidence, as sibsab so clearly points out in her reference to the Prophetess Deborah and the Canaanites. For those of you who might be further interested please continue your investigation here: <http://bibleatlas.org/canaan.htm> -- perhaps, the tale of a contrived coincidence. With regard to Barack H. Obama it appears that sibsab's reference to the Prophet Mohammed's horse is, indeed, misplaced. With the understanding that Barack Obama's father is Kenyan and bears the same name as his son, that the two official language of Kenya are English and Kiswahili, and that the Swahili language family contains many Arabic "loan" words, then it is likely that we should take President-Elect Obama's interpretation of his own name as both genuine and correct. As a special treat for Robert, I thought you all might like to share in the following link: <http://www.bartleby.com/61/JPG/tree.jpg> It shows that both Hebrew and Arabic are derivates of the same proto-language, but are indeed quite distant from another within the family of languages derived from the proto-language. Special thanks to Mihaela Ghiuzeli for starting the ball rolling and to Nesrin and muhammad turman for their very useful insight with regard to the Arabic language. In the end it appears that the Barack of President-Elect Obama, and the Barack of President Mubarak of Egypt are indeed very different. Then again, Arabic and Kiswahili are different languages, spoken in different cultures, in different parts of the world. It was also fun to learn that Barack is the family name of an Afghan soccer player. Thanks, LittleBalu! For the moment, I will shy away from addressing what the Russian's think of the new US President to be. Surely, foxes, no matter their color, are known for their cleverness. I will wait until after the current crisis in Palestine (Canaan) is over before grading my question on the name Hussein."