Early Names In Genesis

        Names in the Bible describe reputations. The word שֵׁם šēm is frequently translated into English as name, but it can also be translated as reputation or character (i.e. Gn 6:4). One needs to look no further than Adam and Eve, whose names mean humanity and life giver respectively, to see the correlation between function and name. But there’s another neat feature about certain names in Genesis: they cross language barriers. Here are some examples:

• הֶבֶל héḇel (= “Abel”) in Hebrew means something like vanity or breath. Basically, it is the idea of having existed for nothing. Why so? Because Abel’s days were cut short and he has no recorded offspring. In Syriac, a dialect of Aramaic, his name means son while in Akkadian it means shepherd. Abel was all of these things. 
• חָוָה ḥāwâ (= “Eve”) indicates a life giver in Hebrew, but her name is also related to the word חֵיוֵי ḥêwê which means snake in Aramaic.ⁱ Perhaps this relates to her being the object of the serpent’s attention in Gn 3.
• The name Babylon (= בָּבֶל bāḇel in Hebrew) is linked to the verb בָּלַל bālal (= “confuse”) in Gn 11:9. Recall that God confused the languages there; however, to the ancient Akkadian speaking Babylonians the city was called Babilu meaning Gate of Heaven.
• The name עֵדֶן ‘ḗden in Hebrew means luxury, pleasure, or delight. In Aramaic the root means well watered or fruitful. To the Sumerians, the cradle of civilization, it meant plain or steppe. Sumerian isn’t a Semitic language. 

For a book that speaks of mankind having descended from a common parentage, it sure has some interesting things in it to reinforce this idea. These names and others transcend cultural boundaries reaching into the most ancient of Semitic languages.

      

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Notes:

[i]    See M. Jastrow: 452.