Lexigraphic note: neshama

[magid]

As I drifted off to sleep last night, I started thinking about the Hebrew word neshama (soul), wondering what it's related to. In my sleep-fogged state, all I could come up with was a weak nun at the beginning and hey at the end, re-nouning off the two-letter root shem (name), tying together one's self rather neatly, I thought.

This morning I pulled out the dictionary and found that neshem is respiration, which works well with the wording in Genesis 2:7, about the Deity forming a person of clay, then breathing life in. I still wonder whether neshem is related to shem, though; I'd like it to be.