Zechariah

Meaning of Zechariah

Zechariah, ultimately drawn from the Hebrew זְכַרְיָה (Zekharyāh) and most commonly glossed as “Yahweh remembers,” enters English by way of the Latin Zacharias and has circulated in the Anglo-American onomastic repertoire since the Reformation, when biblical names were deliberately revived for their theological resonance. In contemporary usage the name is articulated in English as zuh-KAIR-ee-uh (/zəˈkɛəriə/), while Spanish renders it as seh-kah-REE-ah (/sekaˈɾi.a/), both preserving the emphatic penultimate stress characteristic of the original Semitic pattern. Textual associations are multifold: the eponymous minor prophet of the Old Testament, the priestly father of John the Baptist in the New Testament, and, by extension, a long tradition of clerical scholarship, all confer an aura of scriptural erudition. Though its streamlined cousin Zachary has tended to eclipse it in everyday speech, Zechariah persists at a modest but remarkably stable frequency in the United States—hovering between the mid-500s and mid-700s in the national rankings over the past half-century—suggesting a niche appeal among parents who favor a historically grounded yet distinctive appellation.