Menu

Hanukkah Baby Names: Sweet-Spot Biblical Boy Names

Hanukkah Baby Names: Sweet-Spot Biblical Boy Names

To commemorate Hannukah, the Jewish 8-day “festival of lights” — when eight candles are lit to celebrate the miracle that a small quantity of oil to light the ancient Temple’s menorah lasted eight days—we seek some Old Testament boys’ names that are in the sweet spot, meaning names that are well used enough to be familiar and on the Social Security list but down below the Top 100.

With Noah as the Number One boys’ name (given to 19,000+ baby boys last year), and followed by others in the Top 25– Benjamin, Jacob, Elijah, Ethan, David, Joseph, Samuel and Gabriel–it might seem that all the good Old Testament boy names might be taken—or at least taken by multiple thousands of newborns each year. But, take heart!– if you’re the kind of parent who doesn’t want such a popular name for your son, there are lots of other great biblical boy names that are considerably less common.

Listed below are some of those choices—a few of them quite surprising– starting from the least popular ones, those positioned in the lower depths of the Social Security list, and ending with those that are higher up but still below the Top 100. 

Ranked from the 800s way down to Number 997.

Eliezer

Ephraim

Reuben

In the 700s

Abdiel

Azariah

Cain

Elisha

Enoch

Jedidiah

Zechariah

Ranked smack in the middle, from the 500s to 600s

Amos

Asa

Hezekiah

Raphael

Samson

Saul

Uriah

Ranked in the 300s to 400s

Seth

Gideon

Solomon

Abram

Zachariah

Moses

From the 100s to 200s

Abel

Abraham

Ezekiel

Israel

Jesse

Joel

Jonah

Judah

Malachi

Micah

Nathaniel

Happy hoilday!

About the Author

Linda Rosenkrantz

Linda Rosenkrantz

Linda Rosenkrantz is the co-founder of Nameberry, and co-author with Pamela Redmond of the ten baby naming books acknowledged to have revolutionized American baby naming. You can follow her personally at InstagramTwitter and Facebook. She is also the author of the highly acclaimed New York Review Books Classics novel Talk and a number of other books.