852: delilah Apr 8, 2017

Plenty of common Western names have some biblical relevance. It is usually from the frequency of these names that terms like 'john' referring to a man who hires prostitute, or foundation the baseball team, Yankees, come about. Some names, such as 'Delilah', are also used as nouns separate from the name, but with connotations stemming from Scripture, and not contemporary connotations. It is from the story of Samson and Delilah where the sense of the word as 'seductress' began, but the name was around for much longer than this. There is disagreement concerning the true etymology of this word, but it either comes from the Hebrew element 'dal' meaning 'weak' or the Hebrew for 'delight'. Unlike other much older names like 'Matthew' or 'John', 'Delilah' only started to be used as a name in the 17th century with the Puritans, though it gained more popularity following Saint-Saens' opera, Samson and Delilah (1877). Like 'John' which also appears in other languages as 'Jean', 'Juan', 'Jan', etc. Delilah has at least 15 variant transcriptions including 'Dalia', 'Dalialah', 'Delylah', and even 'Dalida' in French.