The latest viral internet trend is creating AI-generated images in the style of Studio Ghibli. You've very likely seen them by now—or maybe even created some yourself.
They look something like this:
But did you know there's a connection between Ghibli and a very common Hebrew root?
As noted, the images are inspired by the style of Studio Ghibli, a Japanese animation (anime) studio. The Wikipedia entry gives this explanation for the origin of the studio’s name:
The name "Ghibli" was chosen by Miyazaki from the Italian noun ghibli (also used in English), the nickname of Italy's Saharan scouting plane Caproni Ca.309, in turn derived from the Italianization of the Libyan Arabic name for a hot desert wind (قبلي qibliyy). The name was chosen by Miyazaki due to his passion for aircraft and also for the idea that the studio would "blow a new wind through the anime industry.".Although the Italian word would be more accurately transliterated as "Giburi" (ギブリ), with a hard g sound, the studio's name is written in Japanese as Jiburi.
And where does the name of the wind come from? The Wiktionary entry for ghibli defines it as: "sirocco (a hot, dust-carrying desert wind in North Africa, somewhat similar to the foehn)." The sirocco is a similar type of wind to the hamsin familiar in Israel.
The same entry also provides this etymology:
From Italian ghibli, from the Libyan Arabic form of Standard Arabic قِبْلِيّ (qibliyy, “coming from the qibla”)
And what is the qibla? It is the direction Muslims face when praying toward Mecca, literally meaning "direction." For those in Libya, the qibla would be east, toward Saudi Arabia. The Wiktionary entry notes that the etymology comes from Arabic قِبْلَة (qibla, “that which is opposite”).
And this meaning, "opposite", brings us to the Hebrew root קבל kibel, which as I've written about here previously, also originally meant "opposite":
The root קבל in earlier biblical texts did not mean "receive", but rather "to be opposite", or "before, in front of". From the sense of "opposite" comes the meaning of makbil מקביל - "parallel" or "corresponding", as found in the description of the loops of the tabernacle (Shemot 26:5). As with the previous verb, קבל was also influenced by Aramaic, and so in the later books of the Tanach, came to mean "receive", since a person receiving stands opposite the person giving.
So while it's quite a journey from Japan to the Middle East, we've once again found a connection between a popular modern word and an ancient biblical cognate.
