I have been reading through Samuel this week, and when I got to 2 Samuel 23 it lists all the mighty men who served under David. I was just loving some of those names - they're perfect especially for Fantasy writers who can utilise the more unusual names in the bible! I think one of my favourites was Zelek.

In my current WIP, my two main characters are called Elodie and Nathaniel, but I have some characters who haven't turned up yet, and they're incredibly old. I had already picked names for them, but I then decided to use some more outlandish names, but ones that can preferably be shortened to something nippy when needed.

Do you ever use the more outlandish biblical names in your writings? Which are your favourite? (I think the only problem is working out how to pronounce some of them )

I literally started a spreadsheet of obscure Bible names that could double as fantasy names... and then I lost it.

I definitely have! Most the time I will tweak the names a little bit (partially to make pronunciation more clear, which, as you noted, can be a problem). I have a sneaking suspicion that Tolkien might have used some tweaked Bible names as well. Perhaps Merodach-Baladan (from Isaiah 39) inspired Meriadoc Brandybuck?

Since every name in the Bible was originally written down in Hebrew, Aramaic, or Greek, there's certainly room for adjustment of the spelling in English


Both of the copies of the King James Version on my family's shelves have pronunciation-guide diacritical marks (i.e. macrons over long vowels and breves over short vowels) on what at least seemed to be every occurrence of every name (at least in the Old Testament). On the other hand, I have no idea where the translators or editors got those pronunciations (from which of the two incompatible Jewish traditions, or somewhere else?), or how reliable they might be