Abisai
Meaning
the form of Abishai used in Latin and Spanish Bibles; Hebrew, 'my father is a gift' (also glossed 'father of a gift')
The story
Abisai is the form of Abishai printed in the Latin and Spanish Bibles, and in the Reina-Valera a Spanish reader meets him mid-battle: Abisai, brother of Joab, son of Zeruiah, chief of David's thirty mighty men. He was David's nephew and one of his fiercest loyalists, and his Hebrew name is glossed my father is a gift, or in some references father of a gift, a dispute the scholars keep politely open. As a modern given name it is rare and deliberate: Brazil's census counted just 129, and the American record barely opens a column. That is part of its character. Most bearers of Abisai got the name from a parent who knew exactly where in the text to find it. A warrior's name that lives more in scripture than in registries, waiting, like a good verse, to be chosen on purpose.
Popularity, 1890–2024
Abisai does not appear in US Social Security baby-name records, which list only names given to at least five babies in a year. There is no popularity curve to chart: a genuinely rare pick.
See popularity in Brazil
Popularity in Brazil
129 people · the #34,464 first name in Brazil · about 1 in 1,000,000 · median age 24
Among people named Abisai living in Brazil at the 2022 census, more were born in the 2000s than in any other decade.
Source: IBGE, Censo Demográfico 2022
The Abisai deep dive
Whether you’re naming a baby or exploring your own name’s history, this is a personal letter, not a list: where Abisai truly comes from, how it traveled, and what a century of records reveals. If you have grown a tree on nametree, it also considers how Abisai fits with your family’s names and surname.
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