🔼The name Adalia: Summary
- Meaning
- Unknown
- Door Of Yah, I May Hang
- Strong Mind
- Etymology
- From a Persian term of unknown pedigree.
- Possibly to do with the Hebrew verb דלה (dala), to hang, and יה (yah), the name of the Lord.
- Possibly to do with an Arabic term formed from the verb אדד ('adad), to be strong.
🔼The name Adalia in the Bible
The name Adalia occurs only once in the Bible, namely in Esther 9:8, as the name of one of the ten sons of Haman who perished in the Jewish retaliation for Haman's planned holocaust.
🔼Etymology of the name Adalia
The origin and thus the intentional meaning of the name Adalia is lost. It's probably Persian and doesn't mean anything in Hebrew. The final יא (ya') may remind of the familiar theonym יה (yah) — this Aramaic spelling occurs for instance in the name Uzzia — but the remainder, אדל ('adal) or even הדל (hadal) does not occur in the Hebrew or Aramaic of the Bible.
Very creative members of a Hebrew audience might see אדל ('adal) as the result of the cohortative form of the verb דלה (dala) or דלל (dalal), meaning to hang, which would render our name the festive meaning of That I Would Hang:
דלל
The verb דלל (dalal) means to hang, not statically but rather dynamically, usually underway between a reservoir of plenty and a place of need. Adjective דל (dal) means low, weak, poor or thin. Noun דלה (dalla) denotes a drooping bundle of hair or threads of warp hanging in loom. The identical noun דלה (dalla) denotes the poor.
The verb דלה (dala) means to "hang" in that it describes the act of retrieving water from a well by means of a traveling bucket (in English we would call this process to "draw" water).
Nouns דל (dal), דלה (dala) and דלת (delet) mean door but originally referred to a curtain hanging in front of an entrance. Through this entrance folks would travel bearing gifts, wisdom and news from the world at large, much like a bucket from a well. Hence noun דלי (deli) means bucket.
Noun דליות (daliyot) denoted floral hangers made from olive branches, cedar branches, or boughs of the vine.
Jones' Dictionary of Old Testament Proper Names relates our name to an Arabic term meaning Strong Mind (animo fortis), which ultimately depends on the same root אדד ('adad) as the name Iddo I.