The Arabic word is habibi (transliteration) and is masculine. The feminine form is habibti. I do not know what forms were used earlier. I am unfamiliar with the general history of English words borrowed from Arabic but this seems like a stretch. *Habibi *is easy for English speakers to hear and pronounce so would require an awful lot of corruption to become baby.
“Baby, baby, baby! Ah-ah-ah!”–Jet Screamer, 2062
Maybe.
Don’t you remember you told me you loved me Jesus?
You said you’d be coming back this way again, Jesus
Jesus, Jesus, Jesus, Jesus, oh Jesus
I love you, I really do
He was the first to have a hit solely consisting of the word baby and grunts
Not quite rock, but certainly pop:
ABBA - Honey, Honey http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ySWT1tFTSrc
Kirsty MacColl - In These Shoes http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pjvaqVAFuLI
The Archies - Sugar, Sugar http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iQiwqiPeLGk&feature=fvst
Honey songs are pretty thin on the ground though.
As I understand it, *habibi *often turns into h’bibi. Example. Or perhaps it’s just a different transliteration standard. The word I often hear in pop songs in Arabic is not pronounced hah-bee-bee, but more like HHH-bi-bee, very throaty. It wouldn’t be too far fetched for Anglo speakers to drop the h over time.
Might be a Kabyle or Berber specificity though, I wouldn’t know about these things.
That being said, yeah, it’s a *really *far-fetched theory, because black slaves transported across the pond did not speak Arabic to begin with, nevermind singing Arabic songs.
Well yes, but in that song it is not a diminutive. He is singing about actual little girls and how it a good thing that they exist because that is where women come from: “they grow up in the most delightful way”.
The song is still very creepy, however, in at least three ways:[ol]
[li]The well signaled literal meaning is still not enough to dispel the strong whiff of pedophilia;[/li][li]The actual story from which it comes is about a young girl who is being deliberately raised to take up a career as a prostitute (I don’t know how this was handled in the musical from which the song comes, which I have never seen - could Gigi still be a hit today? - but it is clear enough in the original story);[/li][li] The closing line, “without them, what would little boys do?”, if taken literally implies lust amongst children; if taken metaphorically (little boys means those little boys when they are grown up) it gets you back to that pedophilia thing.[/li][/ol]
I do not know if Chevalier was actually uncomfortable singing it, but he had reason to be.
As my list has three items, greeting to Opal are not obligatory.
It doesn’t cost anything to be polite, baby.
He’s a dreamer, dreamer, dreamer!
nm