How Are “BAR” and “BAS” Pronounced?

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An old friend of my mother recently returned to Florida from an extended stay in California. One of the highlights of her trip to California, she reported to my mother, was some lectures by a Dr. Horn. Knowing that the distinguished professor and dean emeritus of Andrews University, Siegfried Horn, often lectured at BAS’s vacation seminars, my mother inquired whether Dr. Horn’s first name was Siegfried. Indeed it was, she was told. The lectures were given by an organization called BAS, my mother’s friend volunteered, adding “It’s very big out there.” At first, my mother failed to recognize that her friend was talking about the organization I am associated with, because her friend pronounced it like the person one works for, “boss.” My mother pronounces it like the fish, “bass.” The two women had a good laugh when they realized that my mother’s friend was talking about the Biblical Archaeology Society.

But the problem is more serious. If we don’t indicate in writing how BAS is, as the scholars say, vocalized, archaeologists hundreds and even thousands of years from now may never know how to pronounce the commonly used acronym for the Biblical Archaeology Society, despite their in-depth knowledge of the culture that produced it.

This is what happened with ancient Egypt. We can read ancient Egyptian, whether written in hieroglyphic, hieratic or demotic signs. We know the values of the letters. But by the time hieroglyphic Egyptian was deciphered, no one talked Egyptian anymore. The problem arises from the fact that ancient Egyptian writing does not indicate vowels. So it’s anybody’s guess as to what vowels should be added. Of course we have some idea. Some Egyptian words have been preserved in writing systems with vowels. Other internal clues are also available. As late as 1934, however, the great American archaeologist William Foxwell Albright wrote a book called The Vocalization of the Egyptian Syllabic Orthography. Scholars are still debating the extent to which Albright solved the puzzle.

The same problem arises with respect to the personal name of the Hebrew God. My quick count indicates his name is used over 7,000 times in the Bible. Leafing through Young’s Concordance indicates that it is the most frequently used word in Scripture. We know the Hebrew letters of the name: “YHWH,” in transliteration. But the name was pronounced—vocalized—only once a year, by the high priest in the Holy of Holies on the Day of Atonement. In prayer, Jews pronounced (and pronounce) it “adonai,” meaning “lord,” with a small “l” (the word can refer to a human being as well as the divinity). Other than in prayer, Jews pronounced (and pronounce) it “ha-shem,” meaning simply, “the name.” According to some early church documents, it was pronounced “Yahweh,” and that is the way scholars often write and pronounce it today, but no one knows for sure how the high priest pronounced it.

According to an admittedly limited survey, BAS is pronounced “boss” more frequently on the West Coast and in Pennsylvania. “Bass” is the generally used pronunciation in Virginia, Maryland and Washington, D.C. Elsewhere the usage is mixed or unknown. The subject is perhaps worth a master’s thesis, if not a doctoral dissertation.

The same problem plagues the name of the magazine you are holding, although in a different way. The question here is whether to pronounce the acronym like the place where you can get a drink (if you drink) or whether you should pronounce each of the letters, as “bee, ay, are.”

I recall taking a train several years ago to see some friends in Princeton. As the train slowed down to stop it passed through a seedy part of town with run-down undifferentiated buildings, except for one that had a sign saying simply “BAR.” One of my daughters, then five or six, cried out, “Look, Daddy, your magazine.” This may have been the first word she learned to read.

Our problem here is different. It is pronunciation, not meaning, that concerns us. Some of the confusion here is admittedly our fault. Our records show that early usage often spelled the name with periods, thus: B.A.R. If these early usages are all that ultimately survives, this 065could easily mislead future archaeologists. The problem may be confounded by another early usage of referring to the magazine with the addition of the definite article, as “The B.A.R.” For some reason, these early usages, despite their abandonment in the pages of the magazine itself, have stuck in Israel, where one often hears it referred to as “the bar” or “the bee ay are,” but rarely simply as “bar.” In this country, on the other hand, the use of “bar” is well-nigh universal, if one can speak of a usage as being universal in a single country when in fact the usage varies elsewhere in the universe.

The question, of course, is whether we should officially declare the proper vocalization of BAR and BAS. Will our failure to do so simply encourage regional variations? Or will regional variations gradually disappear on their own?

If we should now declare a single correct pronunciation, what should that be? This is not so clear-cut as it may first appear. If we declare “bar” to be the proper pronunciation of BAR, what do we do with the acronym of our sister publication Bible Review, which is referred to as “BR”?^a Is that to be pronounced as “bee, are” (that’s how my mother refers to the bathroom) or as if you’re complaining about the cold weather outside. In fact, despite my mother’s use of “b.r.,” the pronunciation “bee, are” seems to be, by common consent, the correct one. Nevertheless, it does seem inconsistent with calling BAR “bar” instead of “bee, ay, are.” As you can see, the problem is not without difficulties.

Of course, the inconsistency between the ways the acronyms of the two magazines are pronounced is avoided by adopting a rule holding that acronyms without vowels are to be vocalized by pronouncing the names of the letters, as in BR or FTC. As those of us who live in Washington, D.C., know, the Federal Trade Commission is always called “eff, tee, see,” never “ftzs.” But the logical corollary of the proposed rule—that acronyms with vowels should be pronounced like a word—will not hold: The Securities and Exchange Commission is never called “sec,” but only “ess, ee, see.” So the question as to how to pronounce BAR, BR and BAS still remains open.

One suggestion we received is that both BAR and BR should be pronounced as if they were words. The two magazines could be referred to together as “bar-br.” This would not only be consistent, but we could then adopt a barber’s pole as our common logo.

As usual when we are faced with difficult questions, we simply buck them to our readers. That is obviously the only thing to do here.

An old friend of my mother recently returned to Florida from an extended stay in California. One of the highlights of her trip to California, she reported to my mother, was some lectures by a Dr. Horn. Knowing that the distinguished professor and dean emeritus of Andrews University, Siegfried Horn, often lectured at BAS’s vacation seminars, my mother inquired whether Dr. Horn’s first name was Siegfried. Indeed it was, she was told. The lectures were given by an organization called BAS, my mother’s friend volunteered, adding “It’s very big out there.” At first, my mother failed to recognize that […]