What does Obi-Wan Kenobi mean?

By Sara Bellum On August 18, 2015 In Sara Bellum No Comments

Dear Sara,

What does Obi-Wan Kenobi mean or is it just some cool sounding syllables with no particular meaning?

Thank you for your time,
Amar

Dear Amar,

There are a number of possibilities for the roots of Obi-Wan (Ben) Kenobi’s name. Ben in Hebrew means son. As an example David ben Gurian meant David son of Gurian , so Obi-Wan would have been the son of Kenobi. Yet it is only after he is called upon by Luke that he calls himself Old-Ben. He asks Luke to call him just “Ben”, which can be linked to Obi-Wan and his old master as a man who loses his father figure.

While an obi in Japanese is the name for a ceremonial belt in karate and has a certain cool factor, in Swahili obi means soul or heart and I think that is what George Lucas was aiming for here.

Ken or Kenne comes from German, and means to know, to understand, so Kenobi or Kenne obi means “to know heart”, so put it all together, and Obi-Wan Kenobi means: “to lose ones heart to know ones heart”

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Sara Bellum

Editor at Buzzy Multimedia Publishing

The name's Sara Bellum, and I'm the editor-at-large here at BuzzyMag - the hostess with the mostess, if you will. I like to think that my first calling is fighting crime and delivering a heaping dose of sweet, sweet justice to all manner of thugs, miscreants, hoodlums, ruffians, and ne'er-do-wells, but unfortunately, violent vigilantism doesn't exactly pay big bucks these days.

Times are tough, my friends, and I've got bills to pay, so I decided to put my encyclopedic knowledge of all things sci-fi & fantasy-related to use to help me land a day job. To tell you the truth, it's kind of a nice change of pace. My manicures have been lasting a bit longer lately.