Female Names from the Bible

Due to the spread of Christianity, Biblical names have become common throughout Europe, Africa, America and Australasia although they take different forms in many languages. The following are from a modern English translation. Most personal names mentioned in the Bible are Hebrew although Aramaic, Greek, Latin and Egyptian are also represented. Hebrew names are used in their original forms by many Jewish people, especially in Israel.

One problem for early translators of the Bible was that the name of God (Yaweh, Yahweh) was considered too sacred to be written in full so only the consonants were used. Vowels taken from the substitutes adonay 'my lord' and elohim 'god' were later added, giving the form 'Yehovah' which became 'Jehovah' in European versions. The first element of the name occurs either at the beginning or the end of many personal names (Jonathan, Elijah). In ancient Semitic societies, names were highly individual and a new name would be invented for each child but some famous names such as those of the patriarchs and their families came into general usage. As this could lead to duplication of names within a community, the patronymic system was adopted with the father's name preceded by bar 'son of' for a man or bat 'daughter of' for a woman.

Biblical or Christian names were occasionally used in Britain before the Norman Conquest, often for monks or nuns. After 1066, they were still not common but the growing influence of the Roman Catholic Church is indicated by the increased use of the names of saints or Biblical figures towards the end of the C12th. The Council of Trent (1545-63) ruled that these names had to be used at baptism.

After the Reformation, the names of saints not mentioned in the Bible were largely rejected by the new religious doctrines and Biblical, especially Old Testament, names became far more common. In the C16th, Puritans not only revived some of the more obscure Biblical names but coined their own Christian names from Latin and English.