OK.
But show me the data on the male name “Herod.”
Before I leave again, I’ll just say this about ‘Herod’ (from Greek
hērōs ‘hero’). It isn’t a widespread name like Salome, Mariam, Jacob/James or Joshua/Jesus. In the 1st century, the name is only attested (just going by Josephus) among the house of Herod and the pro-Roman ruling clique of Tiberias. The name is virtually unattested in the Diaspora - it was more widespread among gentiles than it is among Jews. (cf.
Herodes Atticus)
You’ll generally notice a pattern during the second Temple period where the same names are recycled over and over again, especially within the family. In the Second Temple period, naming kids after one’s father or mother (patronymy/matronymy), grandparents (papponymy), or some ancestor was apparently the prevalent custom, especially among the ruling dynasties. So for example, within the Hasmonean dynasty the names
Matityahu (Mattathias/Matthias/Matthew),
Ye(ho)hanan (J(eh)ohanan/John),
Yehudah (Judah/Judas), and
Yonathan (Jonathan) - not coincidentally,
the names of the Maccabees - are repeated in ten generations. (Although quite interestingly, the most common male name at the time -
Shim(e)on - was not used by the Hasmoneans; only
Simon Thassi, one of the four Maccabee brothers, has the name.) There’s also a house of Tubias (6th century BC-200 BC), where the name
Tubias and the Greek name
Hyrcanus are repeated in four generations, each individual being named after his grandfather.
You can also see the pattern among priestly houses. Among
the Oniads, the reccurent names are
Onias and
Sim(e)on for six generations. In the Hanan (Ananus/Annas) family, the common names are
Hanan - a repeated patronymy for three generations - and
Matthias, after an uncle. In the Boethus family, the recurrent name is Shimeon son of Shimeon, while in the Phiabi family, it is Ishmael son of Ishmael. In fact, even Josephus’ family
recycled the names Matityahu,
Shimeon, and
Y(eh)osef (Joseph = Josephus!) There’s a whole lot of other examples.
All in all, this practice pretty much explains why there are so many Herods in the Herodian dynasty (two other common male names within the Herods BTW are
Joseph and
Agrippa) even if the name itself wasn’t popular among outsiders.
There’s also the practice of making up female names from male ones (so
Herodias from
Herod,
Alexandra from
Alexander, or
Yohanna (Joanna) from
Yohanan), having double names (
Salome-Alexandra,
Miriam-Johana,
Salona-Mariame), or using abbreviated forms of names (
Mara from
Martha,
Yohanan from
Yehohanan,
Yeshu from
Yeshua - in turn a contraction of
Yehoshua).
Going by different sources (the NT, Josephus, ossuary inscriptions, the documents from the Judaean desert), the top ten most attested Jewish male names during the second Temple period are (in descending order):
Shim(e)on/Simon,
Y(eh)osef,
Yehudah,
Eleazar,
Y(eh)ohanan, Ye(ho)shua,
Matityahu,
Y(eh)onathan,
Hananiah (Ananias, with the variant
Hanina), and
Menahem. If you noticed, I’ve already mentioned most of these names above. They’re popular both because they were typical names of the Hasmonean dynasty, plus the custom of patronymy/papponymy. (If we’re gonna get biblical, while
Ya’aqov (Jacob/James) is also occasionally found - it’s just after
Menahem in terms of attestation -
Abraham,
Isaac and pretty much most of the other OT names are rare in the period.) As for female names, you have
Shelamzion,
Shalom (Salome),
Mariam/Mariamme/Mariah (Miriam/Mary),
Y(eh)ohana, and
Shipra/Shapira. The majority of women used only eleven Hebrew names, and less than half the women had names in Aramaic, Greek, Latin, Persian or Nabatean.
