What's in a Name?

Much has been made of Barack Obama's middle name. It's been used by many, including talk radio host Bill Cunningham, to imply a connection between Obama and terrorism, and has been used to support the theory that Obama is some sort of al qaeda sleeper agent. Then there is the easy shot with the mention of Saddam. Here are a couple of points-of-view that I've found helpful when thinking about this issue:

Here are Stephen Colbert's thoughts:

Here's a little more serious commentary on Obama's name from Juan Cole the President of the Global Americana Institute:

I want to say something about Barack Hussein Obama's name. It is a name to be
proud of. It is an American name. It is a blessed name. It is a heroic name, as
heroic and American in its own way as the name of General Omar Nelson Bradley or
the name of Benjamin Franklin. And denigrating that name is a form of racial and
religious bigotry of the most vile and debased sort. It is a prejudice against
names deriving from Semitic languages!

Christian, Western heroes have often been bequeathed Middle Eastern names. Rodrigo Diaz de Vivar, the medieval Spanish hero, carried the name El Cid, from the Arabic al-Sayyid, "the lord."Barack and Hussein are Semitic words. Americans have been named with Semitic names since the founding of the Republic. Fourteen of our 43 presidents have had Semitic names (see below). And, American English
contains many Arabic-derived words that we use every day and without which
we would be much impoverished. America is a world civilization with a world
heritage, something Cunninghamism will never understand.

Barack is a Semitic word meaning "to bless" as a verb or "blessing" as a noun. In its Hebrew form, barak, it is found all through the Bible. It first occurs in Genesis 1:22:
"And God blessed (ḇāreḵə ) them, saying, Be fruitful, and multiply, and fill the
waters in the seas, and let fowl multiply in the earth."Here is a list of how
many times barak appears in each book of the Bible.

Now let us take the name "Hussein." It is from the Semitic word, hasan, meaning "good" or "handsome." Husayn is the diminutive, affectionate form. Barack Obama's middle name is in honor of his grandfather, Hussein, a secular resident of Nairobi.
Americans may think of Saddam Hussein when they hear the name, but that is like
thinking of Stalin when you hear the name Joseph. There have been lots of
Husseins in history, from the grandson of the Prophet Muhammad, a hero who touched the historian Gibbon, to King Hussein of Jordan, one of America's most steadfast allies in the 20th century. The author of the beloved American novel, The Kite Runner, is Khaled Hosseini.

Here's the full article