Bababad

• Babel: the confusion of tongues at the tower of Babel (Genesis 11)

• Babbo: a nickname which Joyce's children gave him

• b-b-bad: "bad" spoken by someone with a stutter → in FW HCE's stutter – or hesitancy of speech – is a sign of his guilt, just as Richard Pigott's misspelling of "hesitancy" as "hesitency" in his forged Parnell letters betrayed his guilt
  • Third Census of Finnegans Wake

• bád: (Irish) boat? Noah's Ark?

• badal: (Hindi) rain and thunder → a self-reflexive reference to thunder words