Hebrew Baby Names, With Meanings and Data

Two kinds of Hebrew name

Almost every list of "Hebrew baby names" mixes two quite different things. The first group is biblical: names that entered English through Latin and Greek translations of scripture, and that have been ordinary English names for centuries. The second is modern Hebrew: names coined or revived in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries as Hebrew became a spoken language again, most of which are still unfamiliar outside Jewish communities.

Keeping them apart matters, because the first group carries no signal at all in Britain and the second carries a strong one. The counts below are from the Office for National Statistics datasets for England and Wales, covering births registered in 2025 and published on 9 July 2026.

Biblical Hebrew names, long naturalised in English

Modern and less anglicised Hebrew names

What the figures show

The Old Testament names are having a very good decade

Reuben went to 1,412 boys in England and Wales in 2025 and Ezra to 1,300, which puts both inside the top 40. Eliana rose from 416 girls in 2024 to 736 in 2025, one of the largest single-year gains anywhere in the file. Boaz rose from 24 boys to 44, Noam from 5 to 13, Liora from 42 girls to 72, Naomi from 244 to 296 and Talia from 290 to 260 — that last one a fall. Abigail also fell, from 331 to 283, and Gideon from 39 to 31. The direction of travel is mostly upward.

Ezra and Reuben are now mainstream British names

Neither was in common English use two generations ago. Reuben ranked twenty-ninth among boys in England and Wales in 2025 and Ezra thirty-eighth, both ahead of James at forty-second and far ahead of Richard at 431st. Asher at 360 and Levi at 490 sit just below them. Nobody hearing these names in a British school now reads them as a religious statement, which is exactly what happens to a biblical name once enough people use it, and it is the reason the biblical group behaves so differently from the modern Israeli one.

Modern Hebrew names stay small in Britain

Talia at 260 and Ari at 145 are the exceptions. Liora, Dalia, Hadassah, Rivka, Chava, Yosef and Noam are all in double or single figures. That is not a judgement about the names; it reflects the size of the community using them and the fact that they never passed through the Latin Bible into general English use the way Hannah and Sarah did.

Noa and Noah are different names

This one catches people out. Noah, the boys' name, is from a root usually read as "rest". Noa is a separate biblical name, borne by one of the five daughters of Zelophehad, and it is a standard girls' name in Israel. In the ONS 2025 file Noa went to 205 girls and to 54 boys, so both readings are in use in Britain. If you want the girls' name, expect to explain that it is not a misspelling of the boys' one.

Choosing a Hebrew name

Check the letter that English does not have. Chava, Chaim and Rachel all contain the Hebrew letter het, a sound English lacks entirely, and the "ch" spelling invites an English speaker to say it like "chair". If that would bother you, the names on this page without it — Talia, Ari, Noa, Liora, Amos — travel much more easily.

Be careful with meanings drawn from scripture. Several biblical names are explained inside the text itself by wordplay rather than by etymology: the Bible connects Moses to a Hebrew verb meaning "to draw out", but scholars widely regard the name as Egyptian in origin. Leah, Miriam and Boaz all have contested derivations. A source that gives you one confident gloss for any of them is not telling you the whole position.

Watch for the names that have quietly become unisex in English while staying single-sex in Hebrew. Ariel is a man's name in Hebrew and went to 30 boys and 37 girls in the ONS 2025 file. Noa, Ariel and Shai all sit on that line in Britain and not in Israel, which is worth knowing if the name is meant to work in both places.

Finally, if the name is meant to honour a relative, check which tradition your family follows. Ashkenazi practice generally names a child after a deceased relative and Sephardi practice permits naming after a living one. That is a family and community question rather than a linguistic one, and it is the single most common reason a Hebrew name gets chosen in the first place.