Job - Name Meaning and Popularity -

Meaning of Job

Job, pronounced /dʒɒb/, traces its etymology to the Hebrew ִאּיּוֹב‎ (Iyyōv), a term most scholars render as “persecuted” or “afflicted,” and it entered English through the Latin Iob and the Greek Iōb along the textual pathway of the Septuagint and Vulgate. As the central figure of the Book of Job, the name is inseparable from the biblical narrative of steadfastness under trial, a story that has furnished Anglo-American culture with the enduring idiom “the patience of Job” and supplied theologians, poets, and jurists alike with a paradigm of integrity amid adversity. Puritan settlers, drawn to its moral freight, introduced the name to colonial North America, where it has maintained a quietly persistent presence: United States vital-statistics data show a century-long pattern of roughly 50–90 male births per year, a volume sufficient to keep the name within, yet near the lower margin of, the national top-1000. In contemporary use, Job appeals to parents who favor succinct, antique biblical choices that convey spiritual resilience without recourse to ornate phonetics or elaborate spelling.