ANAK Society - Name and Symbology

Name and Symbology

The ANAK Society explained its name as originating from a passage in the Book of Numbers, one of the books of the Hebrew Bible. The passage, attributed to Numbers 13:33, reads, "And there were the Nephilin, the sons of ANAK, who came of the giants: and we were in our own sight as grasshoppers, and so we were in their sight." Anak was a biblical figure said to be the forefather of the Nephilim, a race of giants. For unknown reasons, the society's name has sustained minor alterations over the years, from Anak in the 1908 Blue Print, the first edition of Georgia Tech's yearbook, to ANAK in recent editions of The Technique, Georgia Tech's student newspaper.

The ANAK Society has adopted a number of symbols over the years, although it has never offered any official explanation as to their meaning. From its founding in 1908 to 1927, the society identified itself only by the name "Anak" or "Anak Society". In 1928 and 1929, the society adopted a bend sinister gules, a type of diagonal red line borrowed from heraldry. The bend was dropped after 1930, following the introduction of a crest bearing the face of a cyclops and the Hebrew inscription ענק, meaning Anak, both affixed to a capital letter T. This loosely drawn crest was replaced with a more professionally illustrated version in 1940 (see right image). In later decades, the society adopted a simple lidless eye to represent itself; this symbol appeared on red ribbon armbands worn at ANAK "tapping" rituals and a plaque outside the Paul G. Mayer Memorial Garden on Georgia Tech's campus. Most recently, ANAK published a modernized version of its crest, a lidless eye affixed to a capital letter T, in The Technique in January 2008 to commemorate its centennial.