Baꜥal — the one true spelling, and the forms that fail it
There is exactly one canonical form of this name, and it is Baꜥal. Everything else in circulation is documented below — with its origin, its status, and where it fails.
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 271
The Canonical Form
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.
No diacritics are required here: the canonical form is the exactness of the spelling itself, the form Ugaritic/Phoenician scholarly convention with matres and gutturals shown demands.
Accepted conventions. These alternate forms are legitimate in their own contexts — not false, and not contested, but sanctioned by convention:
- Baʿal — Ugaritic/Phoenician ʿayin (ʿ) is the ideal consonant, but is rejected by the DNS root zone.
Where the Flattened Form Stands
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.
The Register of False Forms
No circulating form of this name currently qualifies as false under the register's standard — a rare standing. The spelling is short, sturdy, and rarely mangled. The forms that do vary from the canonical are handled below: the flattened form (already ruled acceptable) and any contested variants with real support.
The Contested Forms
Not every non-canonical form is false. These forms carry real scholarly support — they are recorded in the lexicon as variants, with their sources, and the register presents them honestly rather than pretending unanimity:
- Baál — Stress-only alternate transliteration (previous Phoenician entry). Support: KAI, Coogan, CIS.
Where scholars disagree, the register reports the disagreement. The canonical form above remains the temple's primary because the evidence for it is stronger — not because the others were never argued.
What the Address Bar Allows
IDNA 2008 permits the letters these restorations use — macrons, acutes, underdots, thorn, ogonek, the lot — and the DNS carries them as punycode (`xn--` labels). Two honest constraints remain. First, registrar inventory: the protocol permits a character; the registrar's stock decides whether the exact domain can be bought today. Second, combined marks: forms like Apṓllōn (acute stacked on a macron) are philologically ideal yet effectively untypeable on phones and unsupported across much of the registration system.
That is why the rulebook keeps a fallback hierarchy — full restoration first, then the circumflex when the source carries one, then the macron-only academic standard, then an attested variant, and only as a last resort the plain ASCII form. Every step down the ladder is still defensible; nothing on the ladder is a wrong mark. A fallback is a choice among attested forms. A false form is not on the ladder at all.
The Verdict
Baꜥal is the canonical form: attested, checkable, and enforced across the temple, the lexicon, the cards, the APIs, and this register. The plain form baal is sanctioned as the fallback vehicle and nothing more. The false forms above are documented so that no reader has to take the temple's word on faith — the violations are stated, the sources are named, and the register stands open to challenge on every line.
The temple of Baꜥal stands at /sites/baal/.
The Register Continues
This is one of 271 entries in the Canonical Register — the authoritative reference for every flagship temple. The temple's founding dispatch tells the name's story; its Restoration File details the marks; its Resonance File reads the archetype into the industries. The blog index holds the whole archive, and the Rulebook states the convention this register enforces.
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.