lazywebs

[alexseanchai]

I am trying to come up with a third biblically-themed quartet of names. I've got the four matriarchs of Israel and the four Gospel authors. I've discarded the archangels (they're really more of a trio or septet anyway, depending), the patriarchs of Israel, and the wives of Jacob. (Poor Bilhah and Zilpah. Nobody names kids for them.)

I'm debating the ancestresses of Jesus as named in Matthew 1, but there's five of them and I'm not sure anyone these days actually names kids 'Rahab' or 'Bathsheba'. (Hell, either IE or Gmail doesn't even think 'Rahab' is a word!) I'm also thinking about David, Jonathan, Abigail, and Michal (or more likely Michelle--it's close enough to the right sound and is a lot more common in the present era), but that doesn't really feel like a natural quartet.

Comments

[seekingferret]

Daniel, Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego? :P

[alexseanchai]

Good one, I forgot that story entirely...but only one of those names sounds like something parents in the past few decades might have named their kid. Unless the three not-Daniel names are rather more common in Jewish America or in Israel than in not-Jewish America?

[heliopausa]

Four women prophets? Miriam, Huldah, Deborah and Anna?
Or the four Major Prophets - Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel (not a terribly common name, I'll admit - nor is Huldah, come to that) and Daniel.

[alexseanchai]

Ooh, I like those. Thanks!

[nenya_kanadka]

FWIW I've known seven of the eight names you mention there (all but Huldah), several people for each of them, actually. That's from a culturally evangelical Christian background; don't know if Jewish kids end up with those names at a greater or lesser frequency. :)

[alexseanchai]

Good to know, thanks.

[silveradept]

Esther, Sarah, Mary, and Elizabeth?

[alexseanchai]

Doesn't really feel like a natural quartet and also I've already got Sarah in the matriarchs of Israel quartet. Thanks, though.

[el_staplador]

You could get away with Bathsheba, who comes up at least in fiction as recently as Zoe Heller.

[Cheating shamelessly] Mary, Martha, Lazarus and Bethany (can't think of any other place names that would work, sadly).

Jemima and Kezia are OK, but Keren-happuch isn't, and anyway you'd need a fourth.

Four female disciples named in the epistles: Lydia, Junia, Lois and Eunice?

[alexseanchai]

Hm. Okay. Thank you!