"What's in a name? That which we call a rose, by any other name would smell as sweet,"exulted Shakespeare's most 'romantic' heroine, Juliet. Beyond Juliet's lovelorn insistence, semiotics, too, maintains that a name, why, practically every word, is a mutually agreed upon convention accepted by the community/society using that particular language.
Care for an example? A dog is the same cute lovable animal, most often, the best buddy ever. Every language has a different word for the furry friend though. In German, he would be a "Hund", in French a "chien", and in Spanish a "perro". Let us not get in to the connotation of the word as not only would it change as per the community, not to forget, the individual user, but the discussion about its connotation could run in to reams.
Why all these prefatory remarks? Is that your question? Well, I was trying to understand the epithet "Good Friday". As the day commemorates the tragic martyrdom of Jesus Christ, why call it "Good" was what I was trying to understand.
Well, the word 'good' is Germanic in origin according to its etymology. It is close to the German adjective 'gut' which meaning wise is similar to its English version. Why then this epithet?
A possibility could be that in Old English, 'good' was close to 'God', it seems. Why, it has been argued that 'good bye' actually means 'god be by', that is, 'god be near you, take care of you', it seems. In this sense, 'Good Friday' would mean 'God's Friday', may be, as the day Christ attained almost divine proportions.
In other words, 'good' here would mean 'sacred', I suppose. May be, as Christianity thinks that Christ brought immeasurable benedictions to his followers, 'good' could mean bountiful which anyways is one of the multiples meanings of 'good'.
Yet another possibility could be that the day is part of the Holy Week which reaches its zenith on the Easter Day. As the Easter signifies the Resurrection, the inevitable martyrdom on the preceding Friday makes it 'good', may be.
Well, these musings made me realise how little we understand words, phrases, titles we use blithely. Sure, I need to read up quite a bit on this topic is what I realise. The Friday thus became good for me because yet again it asserted my total faith in the absolute need for intellectual humility!
Pratima@Please do illuminate my ignorance in case you know why the day is thus known.
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