🔼The name Nahamani: Summary
- Meaning
- Compassionate, He Comforts Me
- Etymology
- From the verb נחם (naham), to be sorry or to comfort.
🔼The name Nahamani in the Bible
The name Nahamani occurs only once in the Bible. Nehemiah mentions him among the men who returned from the Babylonian exile together with Zerubbabel (Nehemiah 7:7). It's unknown why Ezra omits Nahamani in his list (Ezra 2:2), but this and other discrepancies appear to suggest that neither account was supposed to be exhaustive (see our article on the name Kiriath-arim for a brief discussion on this).
🔼Etymology of the name Nahamani
The name Nahamani appears to end with a first person personal pronoun, or else a remnant of an unclear grammatical construction. The verb is נחם (naham), meaning to be sorry or compassionate:
נחם
The verb נחם (naham) basically means to be sorry. It may mean to have regret but also to have compassion and often to comfort and console whoever one is sorry for. This verb often describes God's attitude toward mankind.
Noun נחם (noham) means sorrow or repentance. Nouns נחום (nihum) and נחמה (nehama) mean comfort or compassion. Noun תנחום (tanhum) meaning consolation.
🔼Nahamani meaning
For a meaning of the name Nahamani, both NOBSE Study Bible Name List and BDB Theological Dictionary read Compassionate. Jones' Dictionary of Old Testament Proper Names proposes Repenting.