Haman
- The name of
 haman
(Haman) is found only in the  .
- His surname
ha'agagi (the Aggagite) as found in the
requires some explanation.
- Jewish tradition associated the name ,
with the name
agag (Aggag), King of the Amalekites in time of the King
Saul (I Sam. 15:8).
- The root of the name
may be connected with the Hebrew root
 ,
found twice in the Bible:
 " ham
libbi beqirbi bahagigi tiv'ar esh dibbarti bileshoni "
(My heart was hot within me while I was musing the fire burned:
then I spoke with my tongue).
 "amray JHWH bina
hagigi" (Give ear to my words, O Lord, consider my meditation).
- Because the root is found only twice in the Bible in poetic
texts, the translation of the word
as "musing" and "meditation" is not definitive, but from the
context we may understand that it is a kind of warm, even
burning, inner feeling or emotion.
- In Arabic, both roots
"HGG" and  "AGG"
are found.
- In the Quran the word
from the root "AGG"
appears three times, with the meaning of "bitter tasting"
(of water), but in old Arabic poetry words of this
root express "fire, flame", for example the verse
quoted by the classical Arabic dictionary "Lisan alArab"
to explain the meaning of the word 
agug:
(He lit his light, uniting and spreading over the
sky
shining as a burning Jewish lamp).
- The Arabic root
"HGG" has also sporadic the meaning of "to burn".
- The root "AGG" exists in Babylonian in the basic verb stem
"agagu" (to be angry) with some derived verb stems according
to intensity.
- The noun form is "aggu(m)" (furiousness) and used mostly with
the word "libbu(m)", (in Hebrew
lev [heart]): ina libbi-sha ag-gi-im (in his heart-anger)
(Hammurabi Codex XXVII s.100).
- Hamman's surname
may not actually be his surname, but rather an adjective to
his name, thus "The furious Haman".
- On the other hand, the author of the
may have added the name
to connect with
, the Amalekite King
in Saul's time, because the name of Mordecai's great-grandfather
was
 qish (Qish)
also the name of Saul's father, and in this manner connected
 's struggle against
with Saul's struggle
against the Amalekites.
- Although , 's
great-grand father and ,
Saul's father were both from the tribe Benjamin, chronologically
they cannot be the same person.
- From what is known about palace intrigues in the time of Xerxes
- he was finally murdered by one of his ministers -
may have been an historical person, but nothing is known about
him, except for what is written in the .
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