What is Reality?
From Israel to Realis: The Hidden Drift of a Word
When we say real, we think of “what exists” — the concrete, the factual, the measurable. In English, it comes to us from Latin realis (“actual, genuine”). But if you look through a different lens — a myopic history lens — you find something more curious.
Realis looks like an anagram of Israel. In Hebrew, Israel (Yisra’el) means “he who struggles with God,” or more simply: God is real. That’s not just coincidence; it’s a linguistic echo.
The sacred names of scripture — Israel, Gabriel, Michael — all end with -el, the divine anchor, meaning “of God.” As language drifted from Hebrew to Greek to Latin, that sacred anchor was absorbed into civic vocabulary. Realis became a term for the actual — reality — but the deeper etymology was forgotten.
Seen this way, every time we use real, we’re whispering a residue of the sacred — even in the most secular contexts. Reality isn’t just “what is”; it’s the long echo of an older claim: God is real.