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A Hebrew name is a name of Hebrew language origin. In a more narrow meaning, it is a name used by Jews only in a religious context and different from an individual's secular name for everyday use.
Names with Hebrew origins, especially those from the Hebrew Bible, are commonly used by Jews and Christians. Many are also used by Muslims, particularly those names mentioned in the Qur'an (for example, Ibrahim is a common Arabic name from the Hebrew Avraham). A typical Hebrew name can have many different forms, having been adapted to the phonology and orthography of many different .
A common practice among the Jewish diaspora is to give a Hebrew name to a child that is used in religious contexts throughout that person's lifetime.
Not all Hebrew names are strictly Hebrew in origin; some names may have been borrowed from other ancient languages, including from Egyptian, Aramaic language, Phoenician, or Canaanite.
Many of these names are thought to have been adapted from Hebrew phrases and expressions, bestowing special meaning or the unique circumstances of birth to the one who receives that name.
are those which include a form of a divine name, such by adding the suffix ־אל -el, meaning "God", forming names such as מיכאל Michael ("who is like God?") and גבריאל Gabriel ("man of God"). Another common form of theophory is the use of the Tetragrammaton YHWH as the basis for a suffix; the most common abbreviations used by Jews are ־יה -yāh/ -iyyāh and ־יהו -yāhû/ -iyyāhû/ -ayhû, forming names such as ישׁעיהו Isaiah (Isaiah), צדקיהו Zedekiah (Zedekiah) and שׂריה Seraiah (Seraiah). Most Christian usage is of the shorter suffix preferred in of the Septuagint to European languages: Greek -ιας -ias and English Jah, producing names such as Τωβίας Tobias (Tobias, Toby) instead of Tobiyyahu and Ἰερεμίας Jeremiah (Jeremiah, Jeremy) instead of Yirmeyahu.
In addition to devotion to Elohim and Yahweh, names could also be sentences of praise in their own right. The name טוביהו Tobiah means "Good of/is the LORD".
Judæo-Aramaic names include עבד־נגו ʻĂḇēḏ-nəḡô, בר־תלמי Bartholomew and תום Tôm, as well as Bar Kochba.
Many of the names in the New Testament are of Hebrew and Aramaic origin, but were adapted to the Greek by Hellenistic Christian writers such as Paul of Tarsus.
Such Hebræo-Greek names include Ἰησοῦς Jesus (originally from ישׁוע Yēšûªʻ), Νῶε Noah (originally from נח Nōªḥ), Ἰσαΐας Isaiah (originally from ישׁעיהו Yəšaʻªyāhû), Ἰσραήλ Israel (originally from ישראל Yiśrā’ēl).
Furthermore, some Jews of the time had Greek Gentile names themselves, such as the Christian Luke (Greek Λουκᾶς Loukas). Though used by some Jews at the time, these names are generally not associated with Jews today, and are considered characteristically Greek and largely confined to use by Christians. Hebrew forms of the names exist, but they are extremely rare.
Also, some Jews during Roman Empire times also had Latin names for themselves, such as the Christian evangelist Mark (Latin Marcus). As was the case with contemporary Jewish names of Greek origin, most of those Latin names are generally not associated with Jews today and have retained a Roman and Christian character.
While most such names are common to traditional Arabic translations of the Bible, a few differ; for instance, Arabic-speaking Christians use Yasūʻ instead of ʻĪsā for "Jesus".
Such Hebræo-Arabic names include:
The influence of Aramaic is observable in several names, notably ʼIsḥāq (Isaac), where the Syriac language form is simply Îsḥāq, contrasting with more Hebraic forms such as Yaʻqūb (Jacob).
Some of these Arabic names preserve original Hebrew pronunciations that were later changed by regular sound shifts; migdal, recorded in the New Testament as Magdalene and in Palestinian Arabic as Majdala, which turned a in unstressed closed syllables into i.
Typically, Hebrew אל -ʼēl was adapted as ـايل -īl, and Hebrew יה -yāh as ـيا -yāʼ.
Even so, many KJV Old Testament names were not entirely without New Testament Greek influence. The influence mostly reflected the vowels of names and left most of the consonants largely intact and only modestly filtered to consonants of contemporary English phonology. However, all KJV names followed the Greek convention of not distinguishing between soft and dāḡeš forms of ב bêṯ. The habits resulted in multilingually-fused Hebrew-Helleno-English names, such as Judah, Isaiah and Jeremiah. Additionally, a handful of names were adapted directly from Greek without even partial translations from Hebrew, including names such as Isaac, Moses and Jesse.
Along with names from the KJV edition of the New Testament, these names constitute the large part of Hebrew names as they exist in the English-speaking world.
While, strictly speaking, a "Hebrew name" for ritual use is in the Hebrew language, it is not uncommon in some Ashkenazi communities for people to have Yiddish name, or a mixed Hebrew-Yiddish name; for example, the name Simhah Bunim, where simhah means "happiness" in Hebrew, and Bunim is a Yiddish-language name possibly derived from the French bon nom ("good name").
Converts to Judaism may choose whatever Hebrew name they like as a personal name. However, the parental names in their case are not the names of their actual parents, but rather Avraham v'Sarah, who are (as the first patriarch and matriarch of Jewish tradition) the prototypical "parents" in Judaism.
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