Abigail

Meaning

The excerpt glosses Abigail as “father of joy,” and explains that this would have been understood in an eastern idiom as pointing to an abstract quality rather than a literal paternal sense—essentially “joyfulness.” In Christian-name usage, the name became especially familiar through the Abigail in the English Bible, whose courtesy helped make the name popular in England from an early date.

Origin

Fun fact

The excerpt notes that Abigail appears in English registers as early as 1573 and was “for many years very frequent.”