Ebenezer

Hebrew

"stone of help"

Updated Mon Dec 02 2024

Ebenezer Origin and Meaning

The name Ebenezer is a boy's name of Hebrew origin meaning "stone of help".

Ebenezer is the name of a biblical place --the stone set up by Samuel to mark his victory over the Philistines--rather than a person. It was adopted by the British Puritans as a first name and then exported to America, where it had some early popularity, even entering the Top 1000 in the 1880s.

After appearing in Walter Scott's novel Waverly and Robert Louis Stevenson's Kidnapped, it made its most lasting impression as Dickens's miserly Ebenezer Scrooge, pretty much annihilating the name, but since Scrooge did reform at the end of A Christmas Carol, maybe there's some slight hope for the old name yet. If you have a sense of humor, you might consider it one of the darker Christmas baby names.

The good news: the appealing short form Eben--so if you find Ebenezer too loaded and quirky for your taste, you might skip straight to the nickname.

# 792 in the US

Ebenezer Rank in US Top 1000

# 1146 on Nameberry

Ebenezer Rank in Nameberry Top 1000

Ebenezer Popularity

1133Nameberry2024

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Famous People Named Ebenezer

Ebenezer R. Hoar
30th U.S. Attorney General (1869,70)
Ebenezer Howard
British urban theorist/city planner
Ebenezer Huntington
American politician
Ebenezer Ekuban
American football player
Ebenezer J. Hill
American politician

Ebenezer in Pop Culture

Eben
Ezer, biblical location (its meaning ["stone of help"] made clear in I Samuel 7:12: "Then Samuel took a stone, and set it between Mizpeh and Shen, and called the name of it Ebenezer, saying Hitherto hath the Lord helped us.")
Ebenezer Scrooge
main character in "A Christmas Carol"
Ebenezer Lucas
characher in "Sims" series