Baꜥal — the one true spelling, and the forms that fail it
Evidence dossier 048 — Baꜥal. Every exhibit catalogued, every ruling stated with its grounds.
At a Glance
- Canonical form: Baꜥal
- Original script: 𐎁𐎓𐎍
- Pantheon: Canaanite
- Convention: Ugaritic/Phoenician scholarly convention with matres and gutturals shown
- False forms on record: 0
- Contested forms: 1
- Series: The Canonical Register, No. 48 of 287
The Evidence
Exhibit 1 — the attestation. The name is attested as Βαάλ, in the attestation KTU (Ugaritic texts) and CIS give us. On the evidence, it means "Canaanite storm and fertility god; the title "Lord" (baʿlu) was also applied to local deities". The canonical transliteration is Baꜥal.
Exhibit 2 — the flattened form. The plain form baal is not false — it is a fallback, and the register is exact about what that means. In systems that cannot carry diacritics (legacy databases, older tooling, parts of the address-bar pipeline) the flattened form is the accepted vehicle, and the rulebook names it explicitly as the final rung of the fallback hierarchy: full restoration first, circumflex where attested, macron-only by the academic standard, an attested variant, and only then plain ASCII.
What the fallback status forbids is promotion: baal may carry the name where marks are impossible, but it may not represent the name where marks are possible. A fallback is a vehicle, never the primary.
Exhibit 3 — forms with legitimate standing. Baʿal (Ugaritic/Phoenician ʿayin (ʿ) is the ideal consonant, but is rejected by the DNS root zone); Baál (Stress-only alternate transliteration (previous Phoenician entry); support: KAI, Coogan, CIS). Recorded with their grounds; none displaces the canonical primary.
Exhibit 4 — the physical record. The Temple of Baal at Ugarit, excavated by Claude Schaeffer, yielded stelae, votive anchors, and the Baʿal Cycle tablets (KTU 1.1–1.6). The Karatepe bilingual pairs Baʿal with King Azatiwada in Phoenician and Luwian. At Palmyra the great Temple of Baal-Shamin dominated the city; at Carthage, Baʿal-Hammon received child sacrifice in the tophet sanctuary. Hazor, Megiddo, and Mount Carmel provide Levantine cultic contexts attacked by biblical polemic.
Exhibit 5 — the continuing record. No Canaanite name was more reviled or more enduring than Baꜥal. The prophets of Israel spent generations attacking his cult, yet his imagery — the storm god who rides the clouds, defeats the sea, and sends rain — was quietly absorbed into the figure of Yahweh.
The Convention's Own History
Every tradition in this register has its own scholarly transliteration standard, built by its own specialists over decades or centuries, and the register follows each on its own terms: Ugaritic/Phoenician scholarly convention with matres and gutturals shown. The principle that unifies them is the one the whole project stands on: a name is evidence, and evidence is not negotiable — not for keyboards, not for convenience, not for anyone.
The Protocol's Position
Can the canonical form live in the address bar? Almost always, yes. IDNA 2008 admits every mark this register defends — the DNS stores them as `xn--` punycode and modern browsers render them natively. The real frictions are practical, not legal: some registrars stock only part of the IDN space, so a theoretically valid name can be temporarily unbuyable; and stacked combinations (an acute riding a macron) remain awkward to type on mobile keyboards even where the protocol accepts them.
The project's answer is a ranked ladder, not a compromise: the full restoration first, then attested fallbacks in descending order of completeness. The ladder's lowest rung, plain ASCII, is a vehicle for legacy systems — sanctioned, but never presented as the scholarly form.
The Verdict
Case closed on Baꜥal: canonical, cited, and defended. The keyboard form baal rides as the sanctioned fallback — and stays in that lane. The register's files remain open: if a source surfaces that changes any line of this entry, the entry changes. Until then, the temple at /sites/baal/ holds the canonical form.
The docket for this ruling: no false forms on the docket; 1 contested form recorded with its support; the attestation rests on 10 cited sources — KTU (Ugaritic texts), CIS, Coogan, Stories from Ancient Canaan.
The Register Continues
The register holds 287 entries like this one — each temple with its own ruling. Read the temple's founding dispatch for the story, its Restoration File for the philology, its Resonance File for the industries, or the whole archive end to end.
Continue the register — previous entry: Bꜣ (read it) · next entry: Ọbalúayé (read it).
The Canonical Register is written from the same canonical record as the lexicon itself. If a false form is missing from this page, it is because the evidence does not support calling it false — or because we have not seen it yet. Show us, with a citation, and the register will answer.