Have you ever wondered about the origin and meaning of your personal name? This quest for understanding can be particularly challenging with Hebrew names, as they appear in various contexts, both Jewish and non-Jewish, and often trace back to biblical times. Hebrew names, for instance, are found in cuneiform sources from the time of the Babylonian Captivity and shortly afterwards. This article explores how to recognize these names in cuneiform garb, what they might reveal about their bearers, and some of the challenges involved in this process.
See also “Hebrew Names” in Personal Names in Cuneiform Texts from Babylonia (c. 750–100 BCE): An Introduction (Cambridge University Press, 2024).
By Kathleen Abraham
History Department
KU Leuven, Belgium
September 2024
Hebrew Names
What makes a name qualify as Hebrew, especially for the region and period we are focusing on? The most straightforward criterion is theological. Names with the theophoric element YHWH, known as Yahwistic names, are definitively Hebrew in a theological sense because no other ethnic group in pre-Hellenistic Babylonia worshiped YHWH apart from those originating from Judea (Alstola 2020, 51-55). Some Yahwistic names are hybrids; they feature an Aramaic rather than a Hebrew predicate, such as Yāḫû-šūrī (“Y is my bulwark”), Yāḫû-laqīm (“Y shall rise”), and Yāḫû-zabad (“Y has granted”). Some even incorporate Akkadian elements, as seen in Yāḫû-šarru-uṣur (“Y, protect the king”) and the female name Yāḫû-dimrī (“Y is my strength”) .
Linguistically, Hebrew names are those with nominal or verbal elements that reflect Hebrew grammar or lexicon. However, isolating Hebrew from other Northwest-Semitic names on purely linguistic grounds is extremely difficult. For example, consider the name spelled Šá-ma-aḫ-ú-nu by a Babylonian scribe. This likely represents Šamˁān > Šamˁōn from the root Š-M-ˁ, meaning "to hear." While it can be compared to the biblical name Šimˁōn (MT שִׁמְעוֹן), it is not exclusively Hebrew, as similar names already appear in the Amorite and Ugaritic onomasticon of the 2nd millennium BCE (Zadok 1988 76). Thus, the bearer of this name might have been a Hebrew-speaking Judean, though it is equally possible, theoretically at least, that he was a native of Phoenicia, Northern Syria, or Transjordan—regions whose inhabitants, much like the Judeans, arrived in Babylonia under similar circumstances, though not all were exiled or forced to relocate. In reality, however, extra-linguistic evidence, including his genealogy (Zadok 1979, 54) and the archival context in which he appears (Alstola 2020, 173 [BE 9 45]), suggests that his origins lay in Judea.
Culturally, names like Šabbātay and Ḥaggay might be classified as Hebrew because they refer to religious practices specific to the biblical Judean community, such as the Sabbath and religious feasts. However, these names were not exclusive to Judean exiles or their descendants in Babylonia; for instance, Ḥaggay is also found among Ammonites and Phoenicians (Alstola 2020, 56).
Therefore, when individuals bearing Hebrew-sounding names, such as Šimˁōn, Šabbātay, or Ḫaggay, have blood relatives with Yahwistic names, their Judean background is probable, and the name may be classified as “Hebrew.” Otherwise, it is necessary to investigate their circle of acquaintances, as well as the archival and socio-economic context in which they appear, for connections with Judea or Judeans before labeling their name as “Hebrew.”
In Cuneiform Garb
When writing Hebrew names in cuneiform script, the Babylonian scribes, for whom these names—especially the Yahwistic ones—were unfamiliar, resorted to phonetic transcriptions. They simply wrote what they heard. Rather arbitrarily, they chose between the several possibilities offered by the cuneiform syllabary resulting in many variant syllabic spellings for the same name. Yet, the cuneiform toolkit also limited them in correctly transcribing the foreign sounds or forms they eventually apprehended. Which cuneiform sign or combination of signs could they use to write down, for instance, the heh, aleph, /ś/ (שֹ), o-sounds, diphthongs, or shewas that occur in Hebrew names—assuming they could even distinguish these sounds—when such sounds did not exist in their native language, Akkadian, and their script did not provide signs for them? Moreover, at times scribes may have heard the same name pronounced in more than one way, for instance in the Aramaic rather than the Hebrew way. Some probably did not even bother or were unwilling to mark what in their ears sounded as minor differences, causing conflated or confused spellings.
The result of these observations is that for the purpose of historical-linguistic research, the cuneiform evidence on Hebrew (Yahwistic) names is hardly reliable and should be used with the necessary reservations.
Did Babylonian scribes recognize the divine aspect of the Hebrew god in Yahwistic names? Babylonian scribes consistently used a special sign, known as the DINGIR-sign, before the names of their own gods, like Marduk or Nabû, to indicate their divine nature (represented as a superscript “d” in modern transcriptions). However, their attitude toward foreign gods was more ambiguous. Therefore, when the DINGIR-sign actually appears in a Yahwistic name, it highlights the scribe’s awareness and recognition of the divine nature of YHWH. When absent, it may imply ignorance, denial, or carelessness. Thus, for the name “YHWH is (my) help,” known in the Bible as Yoezer (MT יועזר), we find in the cuneiform corpus both spellings: with the divine marker (dIa-a-ḫu-ú-i-zi-ri) and without it (Ia-mu-i-zi-ri) (Pearce & Wunsch 2014, 89-90).
How did the name of the Hebrew god sound to them in these names: Yāho-, Yô-, Yāw-Ꜥezer? And how did they render what they heard in cuneiform transcription? Clearly, the scribes struggled with this foreign divine name, resulting in many and confusing transcriptions. For instance, when the divine name is the first element of the anthroponym, we find various transcriptions such as d)ia-ḫu-ú-, ia-a-ma-, ia-mu-, and i-ḫu-ú-. When it is the last element, the variations include -ia-a-ma, -‘-a-ma, -e-ma, -a-am, and (d)ia-ḫu-ú. Scholars today disagree on how to transcribe these various cuneiform spellings in Latin script, leading to various representations: Yāma, Yāw, Yāḫû, and others. In this contribution, I use Y as an abbreviation of the Hebrew divine name in English translations, adopting a neutral stance in this complex issue.
The name spelled A-mu-še-eḫ and Ú-še-eḫ, which appears on three cuneiform tablets (EE 113, PBS 2/1 50, and 60) as different spellings for the same individual, illustrates the complex process of identifying and translating Hebrew names from Babylonian sources into English. He is the father of Mattan-Yāma “Gift of Y” and, since the latter has a clear Hebrew-Yahwistic compound name, it is likely that we may find his name to be Hebrew as well. This assumption is further corroborated by the fact that he occurs in the company of other men with hybrid Yahwistic names such as Yāḫû-zabad “Y has granted” and Yāḫû-laqīm “Y shall rise” in an archive that is known for its many Yahwistic names, the Murašû-archive.
In order to crack the cuneiform spellings A-mu-še-eḫ and Ú-še-eḫ, we have to consider certain features of the cuneiform writing system. In Neo/Late Babylonian orthography, w-sounds are written with m-signs; the West Semitic consonants h (heh), ˀ (aleph) and ˁ (ayin), for which the cuneiform syllabary had no specific signs, are rendered with ḫ- or ‘-signs, vowels, or are left unmarked; and there is a problem with the rendering of diphthongs and the o-sound in cuneiform. Considering all the above, A-mu-še-eḫ and Ú-še-eḫ can be analyzed as a cuneiform writing for the Hebrew name Hawšeˁ or its contracted form Hôšeˁ, “He saved.”
Converting this information in an acceptable English (Latin-script) form is a difficult balancing act. Some scholars avoid the problem by simply citing the names in their original cuneiform spelling. Otherwise, the choices range from normalizations that are faithful to the cuneiform form (Amušeḫ / Ušeḫ), to those that are based on historical-linguistic reconstructions (Hawšeˁ) or inspired by biblical parallels with its Tiberian vocalization (Hôšēˁa הוֹשֵׁעַ); conventional English renderings thereof (Hosea) are acceptable only for popularizing publications.
Biblical Parallels
Almost all Yahwistic-Hebrew names in cuneiform texts from Babylonia surface in the Bible in one form or the other. The same verbs and nouns are productive in biblical name-giving, a few exceptions notwithstanding, for instance Naṭi-Yāma “Y (is the one who) bends down” and Yāḫû-šūrī “Y is my bulwark.” Some differ from the biblical name in terms of vowel pattern, predicate typology or sequence of the components. However, the Bible is a highly problematic reference point in this regard due to its late Tiberian vocalization; the exiles in Babylonia may have spoken a (slightly) different type of Hebrew; and Aramaic pronunciation may have interfered. Two examples from among many are: cuneiform Aqab-Yāma, Yāma-aqab “Y protected” (G perf.) and Aqb(ī)-Yāma “(My) protection is Y” (qatl noun) vs. biblical Yaˁăqōb יַעֲקֹב “He will protect” (G impf., without YHWH);[1] and Yāḫû-az “Y is strength” (qatl noun) vs. biblical ˁUzzîyāh(û) (עֻזִּיָה(וּ “My strength is Y” (qutl noun).[2]
Babylonization
Babylonian scribes occasionally reinterpreted Yahwistic names through re-segmentation of name components, assonance, inter-language homophony, and metathesis. It happened to Hosea’s son, whose name, Mattan-Y “Gift of Y,” usually spelled phonetically Ma-tan-ia-a-ma (vel sim.) by the Babylonian scribes, but once also (and for the same person) Man-nu-dan-na-ia-a-ma. The latter shows that the Babylonian scribe imagined a connection with the common Babylonian name pattern Manna-dan + Divine Name “Who is strong as DN.” Thus Mattan-Yāw was Babylonized into Manna-dan-Yāw “Who is strong as Yāw.” A fine line distinguishes between Babylonian scribes nativizing foreign names to approximate Babylonian names and Judeans reshaping their names to recognizable Babylonian forms (perhaps even with the specific aim of obliterating their Judean identity?). It reminds me of the funny story told by Paul Auster in his novel 4321, where the main character, an eastern European Jew named Mr. Reznikoff, was advised by a friend to tell the immigration officer at Ellis Island that his name is Rockefeller to give it a familiar English sound. But when the moment came, Mr. Reznikoff, stressed and confused, blurted out in Yiddish “ich hob’s fergessen,” which the officer, happy to hear a recognizable name, recorded as “Ferguson.”
Identity and Socio-economic Profiles
Who were the men and women behind the Yahwistic and other Hebrew names that we find on Babylonian clay tablets from the exilic and early post-exilic period? Contrary to the biblical picture that suggests that most exiled Judeans were slaves, the evidence for Judean chattel slaves is limited to only a handful of attestations. The majority of Judeans were freemen or, more commonly, semi-free dependents connected to the palatial sector in one way or another, mostly implicitly, though sometimes explicitly.[3] Upon arrival in Babylonia, they were integrated in the state’s land-for-service development program. They received a plot of land in underdeveloped areas against the payment of various imposts and the performance of military and civil service. In this manner, they could invest in their own livelihood, and at the same time provide the state with staple crops, cash income, and cheap labor. This was the fate of the Judeans living in Āl Yāhūdu, loosely translatable as “Jerusalem” (= literally “Town of Judea”), in the sixth and early fifth centuries BCE. A similar type of semi-dependent Judean landholders shows up in the Murašû archive of the late fifth century, but new types emerge. Judeans are now attested as private landowners, minor officials in the service of royalty and high-ranking officials, and possibly even as entrepreneurs in the land-for-service sector, similar to the Murašûs or as their business partners.
Mattan-Yāma, son of Hosea from the Nippur region in central Babylonia (c. 432-421 BCE), was one such individual (Alstola 2020, 205-206). He assisted the steward of the estate of the Persian queen Parysatis in collecting rent from the Murašûs (PBS 2/1 50) and witnessed another rent payment for the same estate (PBS 2/1 60). He and his Judean colleagues had access to paid labor, which they used to pay off a debt to the Murašûs (EE 113). It is unclear whether, and if so how, this debt and the laborers were connected to the queen’s landholding, but a connection cannot be ruled out.
In the capital Babylon, deportees from Judea were detained in official custody. Among them we find king Jehoiachin, his five sons (without their names), seven men with Yahwistic names, and a group of unnamed courtiers (ša rēši) from Judea. They received oil rations from the storerooms in Nebuchadnezzar’s palace or assisted in their distribution. Courtiers (ša rēš šarri) and scribes trained in the Aramaic language and script (sēpiru) were recruited from among the Judean deportees to work in Nebuchadnezzar’s palace in the capital. Also later, in Nippur, we find such scribes among the Judeans (Bloch 2018, 291-292, 379-397).
About 60 km north of Babylon, in the port city of Sippar, Judeans with Yahwistic/Hebrew names or patronyms were active members of the local merchant community (Alstola 2017). They traded in gold with the local temple and, in their role as “royal merchants,” most likely partook in international long-distance trade. Their social network consisted of fellow Judeans and merchants, but also of members of long-established Babylonian priestly families. Among these Judean royal merchants was Hosea, son of Ariḥ, who, along with his three brothers—two of whom bore Babylonian names— became integrated into the multicultural and socially diverse community of Sippar. Hosea’s own five children were also given Babylonian names, further reflecting this assimilation. His daughter married a Babylonian man from the Ararru (i.e. “Miller”) family. This family was priestly connected, at least in Babylon, but not certain in Sippar. We wonder if Hosea’s future grandchildren from this marriage were allowed to use their father’s Babylonian surname, Ararru. This would be an interesting case of social mobility through marriage. In fact, family names were the prerogative of the indigenous Babylonian population and were typically borne by the urban elite. We do not expect, nor do we see in the surviving evidence, that the deportees from Judea or their descendants held them.
Merchants such as Hosea son of Ariḥ, his brothers, and sons may have maintained connections with their countrymen in Judea through their royal trade commissions. The Bible also suggests possible channels of communication between Judeans living in Babylonia and those in Judea. Jeremiah 29 records the exchange of letters between Judea and Babylonia, while chapter 51 records prophecies against Babylon on a scroll sent to Babylonia with a Judean royal official. Ezekiel 33:21–22 further mentions a Judean refugee who brings news of Jerusalem’s destruction to the exiles.
“What is (not) in a Name?”
The Babylonian Exile was a watershed moment in Jewish history, forcing the people from the Kingdom of Judea and its capital, Jerusalem, into a foreign land and culture. Babylonian cuneiform sources from this period display hundreds of Hebrew names, which are key to tracing Judean exiles in Babylonia during and after the exile.
However, it is crucial to realize that many Judeans in Babylonia, possibly the majority, remain unrecognized. While having a Yahwistic or linguistically Hebrew name or patronym in Babylonia generally signifies Judean (occasionally Israelite) descent, not having one doesn’t mean you’re not Judean. Judeans in Babylonia used a variety of names, including ones derived from West Semitic or specific Aramaic, Akkadian, and even Iranian languages, showing how diverse cultural interactions were at the time. They can only be identified as Judeans if they were related to individuals with Yahwistic or distinctly Hebrew names, and/or lived among and primarily interacted with Judeans. Consequently, the cuneiform data from Babylon on Judean exiles and their descendants is biased towards families that retained the use of Yahwistic names, a bias that significantly impacts research on identity and integration.
Furthermore, just as not every Jonathan today is Jewish despite the Hebrew origin of the name, not every Abram, Menachem, Benjamin, or Chanan in Babylonia in the sixth and fifth centuries BCE had Judean roots. In the Babylonian sources, these names appear in a cuneiform format: Abram, which means “(My) father is exalted” is spelled AD-ra-am-mu (or the like) in Babylonian sources; Chanan, which means “Merciful” is Ḫa-an-na-nu (or the like); Menachem, which means “The one who provides recompense” is Mi-na-aḫ-ḫi-mu (or the like); and Benjamin, which means “From Yāmîn [= south]” is Mi-in-ia-mi-i-ni (or the like). These were common West Semitic names, and although they have biblical parallels, they weren’t exclusively Hebrew or Judean in origin. Some of these names even have parallels in older Ugaritic, Amorite, or Canaanite onomastics from the second millennium BCE, which further shows they had a broader Semitic heritage.
It’s also worth mentioning that we don’t know much about the socio-economic status of many of the Judeans who can be identified in the Babylonian sources. This is because many are just listed as witnesses to contracts, without being directly involved in the recorded transaction itself. Those who were actively involved in the transactions show a range of socio-economic profiles, with chattel slaves definitely being in the minority.
Bibliography and Further Reading
If you’re looking to trace Yahwistic/Hebrew names from Āl Yahūdu, their cuneiform forms, and where they appear in the texts, the Name Indices in Pearce & Wunsch (2014) and Wunsch (2022) are really useful. They also provide an edition of the texts. If you’re looking to trace names found in the Murashû archive, you can use the resource available at https://prosobab.leidenuniv.nl and the online editions in http://www.achemenet.com/en/tree/?/textual-sources. For a good overview of the archival setting of the Babylonian texts mentioning Judeans and their cultural and historical backgrounds, I’d recommend Alstola (2020). It also includes up-to-date references to relevant literature.
Abraham, Kathleen. 2024. “Hebrew Names” in C. Waerzeggers & M. M. Gross (eds.), Personal Names in Cuneiform Texts from Babylonia (c. 750–100 BCE): An Introduction, Cambridge, UK & New York, NY: Cambridge University Press, 139-165.
Alstola, T. 2017. “Judean Merchants in Babylonia and their Participation in Long-distance Trade,” Die Welt des Orients 47, 25-51.
Alstola, T. 2020. Judeans in Babylonia: A Study of Deportees in the Sixth and Fifth Centuries BCE, Culture and History of the Ancient Near East 109. Leiden: Brill.
Bloch, Y. 2018. Alphabet Scribes in the Land of Cuneiform: Sēpiru Professionals in Mesopotamia in the Neo-Babylonian and Achaemenid Periods, Gorgias Studies in the Ancient Near East 11. Piscataway: Gorgias Press.
Pearce L. E. & C. Wunsch. 2014. Documents of Judean Exiles and West Semites in Babylonia in the Collection of David Sofer, Cornell University Studies in Assyriology and Sumerology 28. Bethesda: CDL Press.
Wunsch, C. 2022. Judaeans by the Waters of Babylon: New Historical Evidence in Cuneiform Sources from Rural Babylonia Primarily from the Schøyen Collection, Babylonische Archive 6. Dresden: ISLET.
Zadok, R. 1979. The Jews in Babylonia During the Chaldean and Achaemenian Periods According to the Babylonian Sources. Haifa: University of Haifa.
Zadok, R. 1988. The Pre-Hellenistic Israelite Anthroponymy and Prosopography, Orientalia Lovaniensia Analecta 28. Leuven: Peeters.
Zadok, R. 2014. “Judeans in Babylonia: Updating the Dossier” in U. Gabbay & S. Secunda (eds.), Encounters by the Rivers of Babylon: Scholarly Conversations Between Jews, Iranians and Babylonians in Antiquity, Texts and Studies in Ancient Judaism 160. Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, pp. 109-129.