Prayer Tents Bible References - Prayer Tents

NAMES AND NAMING

When Shakespeare asserted that “a rose by any other name would smell as sweet” (Romeo and Juliet II.ii.43) he was emphatically not expressing an idea that had any warrant in the biblical world — or anywhere else in the ancient Near East. In the ancient world generally, a name was not merely a convenient collocation of sounds by which a person, place, or thing could be identified; rather, a name expressed something of the very essence of that which was being named. Hence, to know the name was to know something of the fundamental traits, nature, or destiny of that to which the name belonged.

In the Bible, this connection between the name and what is named is particularized in a number of different ways. For instance, a name may denote some feature considered fundamental to that which is being so designated — whether that feature is physical or something more abstract. Giving a town the name of Gibeah indicated that its physical positioning on a hill was probably deemed its most significant feature, since “hill” is precisely the Hebrew meaning of Gibeah (so too the name Gibeon). Similarly, the name Esau, meaning “hairy,” is quite fitting for the firstborn son of Rebekah and Isaac, since what was most noticed about him, physically, was his hairy body (Gen. 25:25; cf. 27:11). In terms of more abstract features, a preeminent example is found in the person of Nabal; the name means “fool,” and sure enough, as his wife points out, “folly is with him” (1 Sam. 25:25). Consider, too, the name Bethlehem, “house of bread”; the town so named likely has the reputation for the bountiful production of grain.

The practice of highlighting a significant feature by means of the name given to it is also found in those instances in which a person’s name is that of a plant or animal. Presumably such a name is bestowed when the outstanding qualities of a particular plant or animal are also identifiable — or at least hoped for — in the person so named. Deborah means “bee,” and the idea that bees are a busy and industrious insect certainly intersects with the many and varied positions this woman took on in her life (judge, prophetess, wife, mother, warrior, singer; cf. Judg. 4-5). Jonah means “dove,” and, regarding the prophet who holds that name, the intention seems to be an ironic comment on that person’s character; Jonah’s life was actually far from being peaceful, a characteristic normally associated with the dove (esp. Jonah 1, 4).

A second particularity of the name-named connection, though relevant only for personal names, centers on the circumstances of a child’s birth. Jacob comes out of the womb gripping his older twin brother’s heel: Jacob means “heel-grabber” (Gen. 25:26). Here the birth circumstances (and the name) foreshadow the adult character of the person, as evident later both when Jacob steals the birthright that rightfully belongs to his older brother Esau (Gen. 27:1-45), and when he tricks his father-in-law Laban and so becomes extremely wealthy (30:25-43).

Sometimes the connection between the name and the circumstances of the child’s birth has little actually to do with the child itself; instead, the name concerns itself more generally with the broader situation of the community into which the child has been born. Ichabod, which means “Where is the glory?” is the name given to a child born at the time of a great Israelite catastrophe: Israel’s defeat at the hands of the Philistines, which resulted further in the loss of the ark of the covenant (Israel’s “glory”; 1 Sam. 4:5-11, 19-22). When the prophet Hosea names his daughter Lo-rahama (“Not pitied”), it is done in order to signify the lack of pity that Yahweh now has towards the entire northern kingdom of Israel (Hos. 1:6).

A third way in which the connection between the name and the named is particularized focuses on the destiny of a person; here the name somehow presages that person’s future. Jesus is the Greek form of the Hebrew name Joshua; its meaning is “savior,” which Matt. 1:21 understands as an adumbration of the child’s future task of saving his people from their sins (cf. Luke 1:31). Jesus’ foremost disciple is named Peter, meaning “Rock,” which alludes to this person’s foundational role in the future establishment of the Christian Church (Matt. 16:18-19). Moses, which in Hebrew means “draw out,” is a reference to this child’s eventual task of drawing out his people from Egypt and leading them toward the Promised Land. Of course, the name may also relate to the circumstances of the child’s birth, since by being drawn out of the Nile River Moses was saved from the annihilation that Pharaoh was visiting upon the Hebrew male babies at the time (Exod. 2:1-10). Thus a name can do double duty (cf. Jacob), referring both to the circumstances of the person’s birth and that person’s adult role.

Because a name is so inextricably bound to that which is named, if a change occurs in the conditions of a person or place, the name must also be altered so as to reflect the new and different situation. When Saul becomes a missionary to the Gentiles, his name becomes Paul, a Roman version of the Hebraic Saul; the name change befits his new vocation as evangelizer to the peoples of the wider Roman world (Acts 13:9). When Naomi returns to Bethlehem, having lost her husband and both her sons while in the foreign land of Moab, she asks that her name no longer be Naomi, which means “Pleasant”; instead, she wants to be known as Mara, “Bitter” (Ruth 1:20). Although a person rarely experiences more than one name change, place names in the Bible can be altered again and again, a consequence of their oftentimes longer, and hence more complex histories. The city known as Jerusalem, for instance, is also referred to by such names as Moriah, Jebus, Zion, Ariel, and City of David. Some of these name changes were provoked by political events, as when David, after conquering and claiming it as his own city, renamed it City of David (2 Sam. 5:6-9). Other times the reason for the name change is unrecorded, and so remains unknown (a feature more characteristic of place names than the names of persons).

Types of Names

Most of the names so far considered are of the simple type, i.e., they consist of one element (e.g., Nabal, “Fool”; Deborah, “Bee”). The other main type is the compound; in it two or more elements are combined, sometimes as a descriptive phrase (Obadiah, “servant of Yahweh”), but more often as a full sentence (Ichabod, “Where is the glory?”). Compound names quite often have some religious significance. Indeed, the vast majority of compound names are of the sort where one element is some form of the divine name (usually either El or Yah/Yahu [short for Yahweh]); the other part then offers some commentary on that divine name. Names of this sort are termed theophoric (Gk. “God-possessed”); they are relatively frequent in the OT, with ca. 135 compounded with the name El (e.g., Elimelech, “God [or ‘My god’] is king”; Elisha, “God is salvation”; Elhanan, “God has been gracious”; Nathaniel, “God has given”) and more than 150 compounded with the name Yah (e.g., Jehoshaphat, “Yahu has judged”; Jehonathan/Jonathan, “Yahu has given”; Yehoshua/Joshua, “Yahu is salvation”; Zechariah, “Yahu has remembered”). Note too the name Elijah, which combines both divine names into the statement “God (or ‘My god’) is Yah.” Theophoric names can also appear in a shortened form, wherein the divine name is omitted (though implicitly understood); this shortened form is known as a hypocoristicon (e.g., Nathan, “[God/Yahu has] given”; Baruch [Baruchiah], “[Yahu has] blessed”).

Name-givers

After being created, the first explicit task carried out by Adam is the naming of the animals (Gen. 2:19); Adam thereby becomes a participant in their very creation, since names call forth the true nature or essence of that which is named. From the very beginning of the Bible, then, humans are involved in naming, an endeavor that not only requires discernment, but also has the potential, if not actual, function of signaling the name-giver’s authority over that which is named.

In the OT the name-givers of children are almost always their parents. However, the biblical couple rarely, if ever, works together on this task; naming is, instead, done by either one or the other parent so that naming is, in effect, a rather individualistic enterprise. Out of the ca. 46 accounts where the name-giver is specified, at least 25 involve mothers (e.g., Gen. 4:1, 25; 19:37-38; 30:6-24; 1 Sam. 1:20; 2 Sam. 12:24; 1 Chr. 4:9). Eighteen involve the father (e.g., Gen. 5:3, 29; 16:15; 35:18; 41:51-52; Exod. 18:3-4; 1 Chr. 7:23; Hos. 1:4-9). A very few involve a relationship other than that of the parent, as when Man names Woman (Gen. 2:23), Adam names Eve (3:20), and the women friends of Naomi name Ruth’s child Obed (Ruth 4:17). That the majority of name-givers are women is attributable at least partly to the intimacy of the relationship between mothers and children in the latter’s early years. This focus on females does not extend, however, to the recipients of the names: in the 46 naming accounts referred to above, only seven females are named; two of these accounts involve the “First Woman” (Gen. 2:23; 3:20). The naming of female children by their parents is recorded in only five instances in the OT, and only once does a mother name a daughter (Gen. 30:21).

In the OT children are named shortly after their birth. The NT records the practice of waiting eight days (at least for sons), so that naming occurs concurrently with circumcision (Luke 1:59; 2:21). Also evident in the NT is the practice of naming a boy after some male relative (also attested in other texts of the Second Temple period, e.g., Josephus, but generally not found in the OT). Finally, the NT, along with both the Apocrypha and the post-5th century b.c.e. OT texts, often demonstrates the assigning of both a Hebrew and a non-Hebrew name, a reflection of the diaspora situation in which the majority of Jews were then finding themselves (e.g., Hadassah/Esther, Esth. 2:7; Simon Peter, Matt. 4:18; Acts 10:5).

If names are so essential to personhood, what then of those persons who are without names? Anonymity can have an appreciable literary function, either by shifting attention towards the other characters of the narrative, or by throwing into sharper relief the role(s) assumed by the anonymous individual. Still, given the high value accorded to names in the biblical tradition, it is not surprising that many of the nameless persons of both the OT and NT have names bestowed upon them in the pseudepigraphal literature. Jubilees, in its commentary on Genesis and the first part of Exodus, assigns names to such nameless individuals as Noah’s wife (Emzara), Pharaoh’s daughter (Tharmuth), and the wife of Cain (Awan) — with the latter being explained as a daughter of Eve, though in the OT her origins are not identified. NT examples include the three magi who bring gifts to the child Jesus: nameless in the Gospel of Matthew, a text known as the Excerpta Latina Barbari (a Latin translation of a 6th-century Greek chronicle) identifies them as Balthasar, Melchior, and Gaspar.

Bibliography. G. B. Gray, Studies in Hebrew Proper Names (London, 1896); I. Ljung, “Women and Personal Names,” in Silence or Suppression: Attitudes Towards Women in the Old Testament. Women in Religion 2 (Uppsala, 1989), 15-33; A. Reinhartz, “Anonymity and Character in the Books of Samuel,” Semeia 63 (1993): 117-41; R. de Vaux, Ancient Israel (1961, repr. Grand Rapids, 1997), 43-46.

Karla G. Bohmbach

Prayer Tents Bible References - Prayer Tents

NAMES AND NAMING

Eerdmans Dictionary of the Bible (2000)