Biblical names

×6,827 in the Tanakh First appearance: Genesis 2:4

The Name the Rambam calls the Shem HaMeforash, the Name set apart, and the first of the seven that may not be erased. It is never pronounced as it is written: in prayer and in the reading of the Torah it is said as Ado-nai, and in speech it is called Hashem, the Name. The count here takes both pointings the text uses — the ordinary one, and the one that stands beside Ado-nai and is read Elohim so that the two are not said alike.

A spelling is not a name. As the Name it is counted 6,827 times in the Tanakh; the written word יהוה stands 6,007 times in the corpus. The difference is the particle. Where a lamed, a bet, a vav or a mem is fused to the front of the Name the text writes one word and not two, and a search for the four letters alone can never return it.

×445 in the Tanakh First appearance: Genesis 15:2

The word said aloud wherever the four-letter Name is written. It means my Lord, and Scripture uses it of God alone in this form. The Rambam sets it at the head of his list, beside the explicit Name and as its other writing rather than as a Name that follows it.

A spelling is not a name. As the Name it is counted 445 times in the Tanakh; the written word אדני stands 603 times in the corpus. Most of the difference is not the Name at all. The same four letters are read my lord and my lords, which Scripture says of men, and in the account of the Mishkan they are the sockets the boards stood in; only the pointing tells the three apart.

×245 in the Tanakh First appearance: Genesis 14:18

A Name carrying the sense of might. Scripture most often joins it to a word of praise — El Elyon, God Most High, whom Malki-Tzedek blessed; El Shaddai, by which the fathers knew Him; El Chai, the living God; El Rachum ve-Chanun, compassionate and gracious.

A spelling is not a name. As the Name it is counted 245 times in the Tanakh; the written word אל stands 4,370 times in the corpus. Almost none of the larger number is the Name. Those two letters also spell two of the commonest words in the Tanakh, the preposition to, toward and the word for do not, and a search for the letters returns every one of them.

×60 in the Tanakh First appearance: Deuteronomy 32:15

The singular of Elohim, and a Name in its own right. It belongs above all to the poetry of the Tanakh — Iyov says it more than every other book together — and to the Song of Ha'azinu, where Israel is charged with forgetting the God who made him.

A spelling is not a name. As the Name it is counted 60 times in the Tanakh; the written word אלוה stands 49 times in the corpus. Here the Name is the larger count: the text also writes it with a particle in front or a possessive behind, and each of those is a word of its own that the bare letters do not match.

×2,598 in the Tanakh First appearance: Genesis 1:1

The Name of the first verse of the Torah, and the Name under which God creates and judges: the tradition reads Elohim as the measure of judgement and the four-letter Name as the measure of mercy. Its form is plural and its verb is singular. The Rambam's list names it, and the possessive Elohai — my God — alongside it.

A spelling is not a name. As the Name it is counted 2,598 times in the Tanakh; the written word אלהים stands 679 times in the corpus. The Name is written bound to what follows it, or to whom it belongs, far more often than it is written bare: the God of Avraham, your God, our God, and the form that carries the article. Each of those is its own word and the bare spelling matches none of them.

×48 in the Tanakh First appearance: Genesis 17:1

The Name by which God made Himself known to the fathers, as He says to Moshe: I appeared to Avraham, to Yitzchak and to Yaakov as El Shaddai. The tradition reads it as the One who is sufficient — who said to His world dai, enough — and it is the Name written on the outside of the mezuzah.

A spelling is not a name. As the Name it is counted 48 times in the Tanakh; the written word שדי stands 60 times in the corpus. This one differs in both directions at once. Some of the larger number is not the Name, the same letters spelling a field and a breast, while the Name itself is also written with a particle attached, which the bare letters miss.

×245 standing beside the four-letter Name First appearance: 1 Samuel 1:11

The last of the seven: Master of Hosts, of all the armies of heaven and earth. It is the Name of the Prophets above all — Yeshayahu, Yirmeyahu and the Twelve say it constantly — and it enters Scripture in the mouth of Channah, praying at Shilo. The count beside it is of the times it stands with the four-letter Name.

×50 in the Tanakh First appearance: Exodus 15:2

The first two letters of the four-letter Name, and a Name in its own right: the Rambam rules at Foundations of the Torah 6:4 that Yud-Hey may not be erased, being the shortened form of the explicit Name. It is the Name of the song at the Sea — my strength and song is Yah — and the Name inside Halleluyah.

A spelling is not a name. As the Name it is counted 50 times in the Tanakh; the written word יה stands 48 times in the corpus. The two the spelling does not reach are the Name with a bet fused to its front, which the text writes as one word.

×1 as Ehyeh Asher Ehyeh, at the bush First appearance: Exodus 3:14

The Name God gives Moshe at the bush when he asks what he shall say: Ehyeh Asher Ehyeh — I will be what I will be — and then, tell them Ehyeh sent me to you. It stands in that one verse, Shemot 3:14, and the tradition treats it as a Name and not a sentence.