Ebenezer

Hebrew

"stone of help"

Ebenezer Origin and Meaning

The name Ebenezer is 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.

Ebenezer Popularity

• 878 Nameberry 2023