Samuel

The name goes back to Biblical Hebrew Shemu'el. Its ending, el, is the ordinary Hebrew word for God; the debate is about what comes before it. One reading takes the first element as shem, 'name', which gives 'name of God' - the explanation Behind the Name puts first. A second, credited there to Hanks and Hodges' dictionary of first names, links it instead to shama, 'to hear', so 'God has heard'. Wiktionary offers a third gloss again, 'God has set' or 'God has placed'. None of them can be called settled.

Scripture tells its own story about the name. In the First Book of Samuel, Hannah prays for years for a child and, when her son arrives, says she named him because she asked him of God. Scholars treat that as wordplay rather than true etymology, yet it is the answered-prayer story that made Samuel a name parents kept choosing. It travelled through Greek Samouel and Latin into nearly every European language: Samuele in Italian, Samuil in Russian and Bulgarian, Samuli in Finnish, Sámuel in Hungarian, Samuël in Dutch and Shmuel in modern Hebrew.

English speakers say SAM-yoo-uhl, stressing the first syllable, and the name is almost always shortened to Sam in everyday life, with Sammy as the affectionate childhood form. That ease is part of its appeal: a formal, biblical full name with a short, friendly one built in.

Because it ends softly, Samuel pairs well with a crisp one-syllable middle name such as Samuel James, Samuel John or Samuel Rhys. For siblings, other Old Testament names share its tone - Isaac, Elijah or Nathan for a brother, Hannah, Anna or Ruth for a sister.