🔼The name Rimmono: Summary
- Meaning
- His Pomegranate, His Apex
- Etymology
- From the noun רמון (rimmon), pomegranate, from the verb רום (rum), to be high.
🔼The name Rimmono in the Bible
The name Rimmono occurs only once in the Bible. It's listed as one of the cities that were donated to the sons of Merari by the tribe of Zebulun (1 Chronicles 6:77). Rimmono isn't listed anywhere else, but in the paragraph that describes the territory of Zebulun a town called Rimmon is mentioned (Joshua 19:13), and scholars generally assume that this is the same town.
🔼Etymology of the name Rimmono
The name Rimmono consists of two elements. The bulk of our name comes from the noun רמון (rimmon), meaning pomegranate:
רום
The verb רום (rum) means to be high or high up in either a physical, social or even attitudinal sense, and may also refer to the apex in a natural process: the being ripe and ready-for-harvest of fruits. Subsequently, our verb may imply a state beyond ripe (higher than ripe, overripe), which thus refers to rotting and being maggot riddled. This means that to the ancients, higher did not simply mean better, and an arrogant political status that was higher than it should be equaled rot and worms (Acts 12:23).
Derived nouns, such as רום (rum) and related forms such as רמה (rama), describe height or pride. Noun רמות (ramut) describes some high thing. The noun ארמון ('armon) refers to a society's apex: a citadel or palace. The noun ראם (re'em) describes the wild ox, which was named possibly for the same reason why we moderns call a rising market a "bull" market. The similar verb ראם (ra'am) means to rise.
The important noun רמון (rimmon) means pomegranate and the pomegranate became the symbol for harvest-ready fruit (see our full dictionary article for more on this). Overripe items might suffer the noun רמה (rimma), worm or maggot, or the verb רמם (ramam), to be wormy.
The second element of our name is the final letter ו (waw), which could be construed to be the masculine pronominal suffix: "his".
🔼Rimmono meaning
None of the sources we commonly consult treats the name Rimmono as anything else but a curious variant of Rimmon, but with the otherwise unexplained final waw our name means His Pomegranate.