Hebrew Names

This name -- the basic form is Rachamim -- is especially popular among Sephardic Jews.

See NECHAMA.

Reduces and lightens up the Job connection even further, sounding like a lively, Jody-like nickname name.

A son of Simeon in the Old Testament whose name is largely unknown in modern times -- though that may change as parents look for a substitute for the overused Jacob and Jadon.

Abital is popular for boys as well as girls in Israel, but we rarely hear it here. In the Old Testament, Abital was one of King David's wives and the mother of his fifth son.

Gay, nearly giddy, gee-whiz feel; also too reminscent of a gila monster.

This is most familiar here as a musical name, via Indian Parsi conductor Zubin Mehta, but it certainly could be used by others.

Anglicized as Judah, this name of a biblical patriarch is given symbolically to boys born on Chanukah; a form of it was spotlighted by violin virtuoso Yehudi Menuhin.

The Hebrew name for Passover, making this the Jewish version of naming your child Christmas or Easter.

A bit too elephantine for a modern child.

This biblical name is also a Hebrew term for someone from Yemen, since that country is south of Israel.

Abijah, which you might think of as Abigail with rhythm, is the name of both female and male personages in the Bible. A biblical Queen Abijah was the daughter, wife, and mother of kings. The name is pronounced with a long i, to rhyme with Elijah.

This feminine form of the Hebrew unisex name Erel, possibly a form of Ariel, is used in modern Israel. Also found as Erella and Erelah.

Has taken on a musical tone via the great violinist, Itzhak Perlman.

Now that Jacob has been the top boys' name for several years, this may come to the fore, the way Michaela did after Michael's long reign at Number One. For now, it's one of the more unusual girl names starting with J.

A bit blunt.

We all know that Chaka really means disco.

Rosh is not Ross, not Rush, but an improvement on both of those more familiar names. The Biblical Rosh was a son of Benjamin, so you might consider it to honor a father or otherwise ancestral Benjamin. Very much associated with the Jewish New Year holiday, Rosh Hashanah.