Whats the deal with the Hebrew and Arabic names?
I got most of the Hebrew translations from a book entitled The New Name Dictionary by Alfred Kolatch. It was written as a guide to equate Hebrew names with non-Hebrew names and vice-versa. The author took the meanings of the foreign names and then found a Hebrew name with a similar meaning to use as its equivalent. This method works well in a lot of instances. The major flaw is that the meanings of the non-Hebrew names are not very accurate to begin with, being that the author is a scholar of Hebrew, not names in general. Because of this, the Hebrew names don’t always reflect the “real” meaning of the non-Hebrew names. However, if you’re not a stickler for accuracy, these equivalents are great! Not many non-Arabic names have been translated into Arabic, so for the Arabic names, I looked at the meanings of names in various Arabic name books and websites. I matched up the names based on meaning. For example, the names ‘Afaf, Kulus, and Qudsiyah all mean “star” in Arabic.
