List of names for the biblical nameless


This list provides names given in history and traditions for people who appear to be unnamed in the Bible.

Hebrew Bible

Serpent of Genesis

Revelation 12 identifies the Serpent with Satan, Unlike the pseudepigraphal-apocryphal Apocalypse of Moses where the devil works with the serpent.

Wives of the antediluvian patriarchs

The Book of Jubilees provides names for a host of otherwise unnamed biblical characters, including wives for most of the antediluvian patriarchs. The last of these is Noah's wife, to whom it gives the name of Emzara. Other Jewish traditional sources contain many different names for Noah's wife.
The Book of Jubilees says that Awan was Adam and Eve's first daughter. Their second daughter Azura married Seth.
For many of the early wives in the series, Jubilees notes that the patriarchs married their sisters.
The Cave of Treasures and the earlier Kitab al-Magall name entirely different women as the wives of the patriarchs, with considerable variations among the extant copies.
The Muslim historian Ibn Ishaq, as cited in al-Tabari, provides names for these wives which are generally similar to those in Jubilees, but he makes them Cainites rather than Sethites, despite clearly stating elsewhere that none of Noah's ancestors were descended from Cain.

Cain and Abel's sisters

See also: Balbira and Kalmana, Azura and Awan for alternate traditions of names.

Noah's wife

Daughter of Lamech and Zillah and sister of Tubal-cain. According to Abba ben Kahana, Naamah was Noah's wife and was called "Naamah" because her conduct was pleasing to God. But the majority of the rabbis reject this statement, declaring that Naamah was an idolatrous woman who sang "pleasant" songs to idols.
See also Wives aboard the Ark for a list of traditional names given to the wives of Noah and his sons Shem, Ham, and Japheth.

Ham's wife

The Mormon Book of Abraham, first published in 1842, mentions Egyptus as being the name of Ham's wife; his daughter apparently had the same name.

Nimrod's wife

A large body of legend has attached itself to Nimrod, whose brief mention in Genesis merely makes him "a mighty hunter in the face of the Lord". These legends usually make Nimrod to be a sinister figure, and they reach their peak in Hislop's The Two Babylons, which make Nimrod and Semiramis to be the original authors of every false and pagan religion.

Mother of Abraham

Lot's married daughter

Lot's wife

Laban's wife

Potiphar's wife

Potiphar's wife attempted to seduce Joseph in Egypt.

Pharaoh's daughter

Pharaoh's daughter, who drew Moses out of the water, is known as Bithiah in Jewish tradition.

Simeon's wife

Pharaoh's magicians

The names of Jannes and Jambres, or Jannes and Mambres, were well known through the ancient world as magicians. In this instance, nameless characters from the Hebrew Bible are given names in the New Testament. Their names also appear in numerous Jewish texts.

The Cushitic wife of Moses

Job's wives

Apocryphal Jewish folklore says that Sitis, or Sitidos, was Job's first wife, who died during his trials. After his temptation was over, the same sources say that Job remarried Dinah, Jacob's daughter who appears in Genesis.
The source does not tell which wife of Job has this name.

Jephthah's daughter

The Liber Antiquitatum Biblicarum falsely ascribes itself to the Jewish author Philo. It in fact did not surface until the sixteenth century; see Works of Philo.

Samson's mother

David's mother

The Witch of Endor

The Man of God

The wise woman of Abel

The Queen of Sheba

According to Ethiopian traditions, the Queen of Sheba returned to Ethiopia pregnant with King Solomon's child. She bore Solomon a son that went on to found a dynasty that ruled Ethiopia until the fall of Emperor Haile Selassie in 1974.

Jeroboam's wife

Haman's mother

Old Testament deuterocanonicals

The Deuterocanonical books, sometimes called the "Apocrypha", are considered canonical by Catholics, Eastern Orthodox, and Oriental Orthodox.

Seven Maccabees and their mother

The woman with seven sons is a Jewish martyr who is unnamed in 2 Maccabees 7, but is named Hannah, Miriam, Shamuna and Solomonia in other sources. According to Eastern Orthodox tradition, her sons, the "Holy Maccabean Martyrs", are named Abim, Antonius, Gurias, Eleazar, Eusebonus, Alimus and Marcellus. According to the Syriac Maronite Fenqitho, the name of the mother is Shmooni while her sons are Habroun, Hebsoun, Bakhous, Adai, Tarsai, Maqbai and Yawnothon.

The seven Archangels

Tobit 12:15 reads "I am Raphael, one of the seven holy angels, which present the prayers of the saints, and which go in and out before the glory of the Holy One." Of the six unnamed archangels, Michael is named in the Book of Daniel, and Gabriel is named in the Gospel of Luke.
The Book of Enoch, deuterocanonical in the Ethiopian Orthodox Church, names the remaining four archangels Uriel, Raguel, Zerachiel, and Ramiel. Other sources name them Uriel, Izidkiel, Haniel, and Kepharel. In the Coptic Orthodox Church the names of these four archangels are given as Suriel, Sedakiel, Sarathiel and Ananiel. Several other sets of names have also been given.

New Testament

The Magi

The Gospel does not state that there were, in fact, three magi or when exactly they visited Jesus, only that multiple magi brought three gifts: gold, frankincense, and myrrh. Nevertheless, the number of magi is usually extrapolated from the number of gifts, and the three wise men are a staple of Christian nativity scenes. While the European names have enjoyed the most publicity, other faith traditions have different versions. According to the Armenisches Kindheitsevangelium, the three magi were brothers and kings, namely Balthasar, king of India; Melqon, king of Persia; and Gaspar, king of Arabia. The Chinese Christian Church believes that the astronomer Liu Shang was one of the wise men.

The Nativity shepherds

The Book of the Bee was written by Bishop Shelemon in the Aramaic language in the thirteenth century.

Jesus' "sisters"

The fact that Jesus had at least two "sisters" is mentioned in and, though their exact number is not specified in either gospel. Their relationship to Jesus is unclear. See.
The various versions of Epiphanus differ on whether one of the sisters was named Maria or Anna.

The Innocents

The Massacre of the Innocents was the infanticide of all young male children in the vicinity of Bethlehem ordered by Herod the Great so as to avoid the loss of his throne to a newborn King of the Jews whose birth had been announced to him by the Magi. None of the victims are named by Matthew, but a number of supposed victims were identified some centuries later, when their purported relics were found.

Herodias' daughter

Syrophoenician woman

According to the same source, her daughter was Berenice.

the Child with Jesus

Ignatius was one of the earliest ecclesiastical writers to have given credence, though apparently without good reason, to the legend that Ignatius was the child whom Jesus took up in His arms, as described in Mark 9:35.

Hæmorrhaging woman

Veronica is a Latin variant of Berenice. Veronica or Berenice obtained some of Jesus' blood on a cloth at the Crucifixion. Tradition identifies her with the woman who was healed of a bleeding discharge in the Gospel.

Samaritan woman at the well

In the tradition of the Eastern Orthodox Church, the name of the woman at the well when she met Jesus is unknown, but she became a follower of Christ, received the name Photini in baptism, proclaimed the Gospel over a wide area, and was later martyred. She is recognized as a saint in the Eastern Orthodox Church.

Damned rich man

Dives is simply Latin for "rich", and as such may not count as a proper name. The story of the blessed Lazarus and the damned rich man is widely recognised under the title of Dives and Lazarus, which may have resulted in this word being taken for a proper name.

Woman taken in adultery

A long-standing Western Christian tradition first attested by Pope Gregory I identifies the woman taken in adultery with Mary Magdalene, and also with Mary of Bethany. Jesus had exorcised seven demons out of Mary Magdalene, and Mary Magdalene appears prominently in the several accounts of Jesus' entombment and resurrection, but there is no indication in the Bible that clearly states that Mary Magdalene was the same person as the adulteress forgiven by Jesus. Roman Catholics also have identified Mary Magdalene as the weeping woman who was a sinner, and who anoints Jesus' feet in, and while the Church has dropped this interpretation to a degree, this remains one of her more famous portrayals.
The Eastern Orthodox Church has never identified Mary Magdalene as either the woman taken in adultery, or the sinful woman who anointed Jesus' feet.

The man born blind

Pontius Pilate's wife

During the trial of Jesus the wife of Pontius Pilate sent a message to him saying, "Have nothing to do with that just man; for I have suffered many things this day in a dream because of him."
The proposed names of Procla and Procula may not be names at all, but simply a form of Pilate's official title of Procurator, indicating that she was the Procurator's wife.

Thieves crucified with Jesus

The good thief is revered under the name Saint Dismas in the Catholic Church and the Coptic Orthodox Church.

Soldier who pierced Jesus with a spear

In tradition, he is called Cassius before his conversion to Christianity. The Lance of Longinus, also known as the Spear of Destiny, is supposedly preserved as a relic, and various miracles are said to be worked through it.

Man who offered Jesus vinegar

Guard(s) at Jesus' tomb

Ethiopian Eunuch baptized by the Apostle Philip

In Eastern Orthodox tradition he is known as an Ethiopian Jew with the name Simeon also called the Black, the same name he is given in the Acts of the Apostles 13:1.

Daughters of Philip