Henoch is a spelling variant of Enoch, a Hebrew name meaning 'dedicated' or 'initiated.'
Henoch is the German and Dutch rendering of Enoch, one of the most enigmatic names in the entire biblical canon. Derived from the Hebrew חֲנוֹךְ (Chanokh), the name means 'dedicated,' 'initiated,' or 'trained' — rooted in a verb associated with consecration and the beginning of a new thing. In Genesis, two figures bear the name: Enoch son of Cain, who founds the first city, and the far more celebrated Enoch son of Jared, who 'walked with God' and was taken directly to heaven without experiencing death — one of only two figures in the Hebrew Bible accorded this extraordinary distinction.
This second Enoch became a figure of tremendous mystical importance in Jewish, Christian, and Islamic traditions. The apocryphal Books of Enoch, particularly 1 Enoch (the Ethiopic Apocalypse of Enoch), expanded his story into a vast cosmological vision — he became the scribe of heaven, the witness to the secrets of angels and the cosmos, the father of Methuselah. These texts were enormously influential in early Judaism and early Christianity before being largely excluded from the canonical Bible, yet they shaped angelology, eschatology, and mystical theology for centuries.
In Islam, Enoch is identified with the prophet Idris. The Henoch spelling specifically flourished in German-speaking Mennonite, Amish, and Lutheran communities from the Reformation onward, where Old Testament names were prized for their scriptural weight and simplicity. Today Henoch remains a rare and striking choice — carried by families with deep religious roots or by parents drawn to names that sound ancient without being exhausted by overuse.