🔼The name Meni: Summary
- Meaning
- Apportionment
- Etymology
- From the verb מנה (mana), to count or to reckon.
🔼The name Meni in the Bible
It's not entirely clear whether Meni is a personal name or a general concept, but if it is a name, it's the name of a pagan god of fate, comparable with the Arabic deity Maniyyat or Manat and the Nabataean deity Manutun (says BDB Theological Dictionary).
This name or concept Meni is mentioned only once in the Bible, in Isaiah 65:11, where it occurs in conjunction with the name/concept Gad (meaning fortune or band of marauders). The interpretations of these two "names" vary between the translations: the Darby, Young and Lutheran translations read Gad and Meni. The American Standard, New American Standard, New International Version and Jewish Society Publication read Fortune and Destiny. The King James has "that troop" and "that number".
A similar hiding of a pagan deity's name in mainstream translations occurs in Acts 28:4, where Paul's shipmates speak of the goddess Dike (Justice).
🔼Etymology of the name Meni
The name Meni comes from the verb מנה (mana) meaning to count or to reckon, and particularly from its derivation מנה (mana), meaning portion or part:
מן
The interrogative pronoun מן (man) means "what?" but the preposition מן (min) means "out of" or "from". The latter is often deployed as prefix, in which only the מ (m) is written. Nouns formed from "מ plus root" commonly describe an "agent" or "place-of" whatever the action of the root describes.
The core function of these words is to distinguish an entity from its environment: hence to distinguish. In Proto-Indo-European appears a strikingly similar root, namely men-, from which we get words like mnemonic and mind (and money).
Verb מנה (mana) means to count or assign or partition (to demarcate a thing from where it emerged from). Nouns מנה (mana) and מנת (menat) mean portion or part. Noun מנה (maneh) is a unit of weight; the mina. And noun מנה (moneh) means time (not clock time but as in ten "times").
Noun מן (men) describes a harp string and is an Aramaic loan word.
🔼Meni meaning
For a meaning of the name Meni, NOBSE Study Bible Name List reads Destiny. Jones' Dictionary of Old Testament Proper Names doesn't recognize Meni as a name and forgoes any discussion of it. BDB Theological Dictionary lists our name under the verb מנה (mana) and translates it with Award, Apportionment.