Contemporary with Hezekiah, and persecuted by the Assyrian monarch when he returned to Nineveh after the miraculous destruction of his host, was the blind Israelite of the captivity whose name is explained to have been probably Tobijah (the goodness of the Lord), a name occurring again in the prophet Zechariah, and belonging afterwards to one of the Samaritan persecutors. Probably, in Greek, came the variation of the names of the father and son; perhaps the latter was once meant for Tobides, the son of Tobias.
The marvellous element in the book of Tobit gained for it much popularity; scenes from it appeared in art. Thus Tobias had a diffusion in the later middle ages much greater than the names of his contemporaries of far more certain history, and in Ireland Toby has enjoyed the honour, together with Thaddeus and Timothy, of figuring as an equivalent for Tadgh, a poet.
| English. | French. | Swiss. | Hamburg. | Italian. | Russian. |
| Tobias | Tobie | Tobies | Tewes | Tobia | Tobija |
| Tobit | Tebes | Tobej | |||
| Toby | Tebos | ||||
| Beiali |
Hephzibah (my delight is in her), was the wife of Hezekiah, and it may have been in allusion to her that Isaiah spoke of the land being called Hephsibah. It has been rather a favourite name in America, where it gets turned into Hepsy.
As Judah sinned more and more and her fate drew on, Jeremiah stood forth as her leading prophet. His name meant exalted of the Lord, and became Jeremias in the Greek, Jeremy in vernacular English. As the name of some of the early eastern saints it has had a partial irregular sort of use in the West, and is adopted direct from the prophet in the Greco-Slavonic Churches. The French, struck by the mournful strain of the prophet, use Jeremiade to express a lamentation; and the English are rather too ready to follow their example. Jeremy is considered as another variety of equivalent for the Gaelic Diarmaid, and this has led to the frequency of Jerry among families of Irish connection. In Switzerland, Jeremias is contracted into Meies or Mies; in Russia it is Jeremija; but nowhere has it been so illustrious in modern times as in the person of our own Jeremy Taylor. The king whom Jeremiah saw led into captivity was Zedekiah (justice of the Lord).
The prophet of the captivity, Daniel, bore in his name an amplification of that of Dan (a judge). The termination signified God the judge, and the alias Belteshazzar, imposed upon him by the Chaldean monarch, is considered to translate and heathenize the name, making Bel the judge. It is observable that Daniel never calls himself thus, though he gives these heathen titles to his three companions.
Daniel has always flourished as a name in the East. Daniel and Verda (a rose), were martyred by Shapoor in 344; another Daniel was crazy enough to succeed Simeon Stylites on his pillar; and thus the Armenian, Montenegrin, and Slavonian races are all much attached to Daniela, or Daniil, as they call it in Russia; or in Esthonia, Taniel or Tanni. The Welsh adopted it as Deiniol, the name of the saint who founded the monastery of Bangor, the High Choir, in the sixth century, and it was thus known to the Bretons; and in Ireland it was adopted as the equivalent to Domnall, Donacha, and other names from Don (or brown-haired), thus causing Dan to be one of the most frequent of Irish contractions.
St. Jerome “transfixed with a dagger”—with his pen—the additional chapters of the Book of Daniel relating to the story of Susanna, to show that he did not regard it as genuine, but, like the story of Judith, it was greatly more popular than the narratives in the canonical books, and was commemorated in ballad, mystery, tapestry, and painting. The name was properly Schuschannah (a lily), though we know it as Susannah. It belonged to one of the holy women at the sepulchre, and it was likewise in the calendar, for two virgin martyrs, named Susanna, had suffered in the times of persecution, and though not commemorated in the Western Church, Queen Susanna, the “Lily of Tiflis,” had died for the truth in the hands of Mahometans. The name has been chiefly popular in France and Switzerland, as in England. The Swiss contraction, Züsí-Ketti, for Susanne-Catherine, is quaint.[[19]]
| English. | German. | Bavarian |
| Susannah | Susanne | Susanne |
| Susan | Suschen | Sanrl |
| Susie | Suse | Sandrl |
| Sukey | ||
| Sue | ||
| Swiss. | French. | Lithuanian. |
| Susanne | Susanne | Zuzane |
| Zosa | Suzette | |
| Zosel | Suzon | |
| Zösel |
This may be the best place to mention the Aramean Tabitha, explained by St. Luke as the same as Dorcas (a roe or gazelle), the Greek word being from its full dark eye. Tabitha and Dorcas both have associations unsuited to the “dear gazelle.” As the charitable disciple raised by St. Peter, her names were endeared to the Puritans.