Baby names and the Bible’s reliability

Each summer, the most popular baby names for the previous year are revealed. In Scotland, Freya replaced Olivia as the top name for girls, with Noah holding on to the number 1 slot for boys. In England, Olivia was the most popular name for girls for the tenth year in a row, with Muhammad the most popular boys’ name for the third successive year.

As Clare Green, an expert who writes for baby-naming website Nameberry, explained to the BBC, “Names can build momentum – the more people give their child a name, the more other parents hear it and like the sound of it, so it snowballs.”

You’ll know this if you have a child at school. There might be 25 people in their class, but there won’t be 25 different names. Or I think of the people I’ve played football with on Friday nights over the years — even if it’s only 5-a-side there can be multiple Iains, Alans, Davids, etc. My friend Josiah played for the first time last week and it was clearly a name people weren’t using to shouting in the middle of a match!

And in fact, one of the quiet indications that the Bible is accurately reporting real events is its use of names.

For a start, the Bible has lots of people with the same names! Works of fiction generally don’t. But in the New Testament there are 8 Simons, 6 or 7 Marys, 6 Josephs, 6 Judases, etc. Having some baby names be more popular than others is nothing new — and this is reflected in the New Testament documents. Read the rest of this article written by Rev. Stephen Steele for a local paper here.