In this little snippet from a 1899 letter, an aspiring occultist/magician dude suggests a name for a new lodge: “Pantaurès.” As you can see, he writes it out twice – first in French, and then in Hebrew.
Two questions about his Hebrew spelling:
Does he get it right? I.e.: Do the Hebrew letters truly spell out the word “Pantaurès”?
What are the names of the letters he uses (listed from right to left, natch)?
a) As is typical in Hebrew (and Yiddish), those letters correspond to only the consonants in “Pantaurès” - you have to interpolate the vowels yourself.* The first letter can be pronounced “p” or “f,” and the last letter “s” or “sh.” Resolving all these ambiguities would require writing out the word with the seldom-used niqqud.
*Technically, the second letter isn’t even a consonant. It’s an aleph, which has (AFAIK) no sound of its own, so he could have left it out without changing the pronunciation.
b) The third letter appears to be a heth (pronounced “[fishbone caught in throat”]) rather than a taw (pronounced “t”). He may well have meant to write a taw and left out the “tail” due to error or pen failure. (Note that the fifth letter, resh, is missing its lower half.)
pe - aleph - nun - taw (probably) - resh - sin.
Brilliant explanation, Flywheel, thank you so much!
