From Hebrew meaning possession or inheritance, borne by a queen in the Old Testament.
Jerusha is a Biblical name of Hebrew origin, derived from the root yarash, meaning "inheritance," "possession," or "one who has been given what is rightfully hers." The name carries a deep theological resonance in the Hebrew tradition, where inheritance was not merely material but covenantal — the land and blessing passed from God to the patriarchs and their descendants. In the Old Testament, Jerusha (also spelled Jerushah) was the daughter of Zadok and wife of King Uzziah of Judah, and the mother of King Jotham — placing her in the royal genealogy of the Davidic line at a pivotal moment in the history of the divided kingdom.
The Puritan colonists of New England, who mined the Old Testament systematically for names that expressed theological meaning rather than aristocratic lineage, were drawn to Jerusha precisely because of its scriptural grounding and the weight of its meaning. A daughter named Jerusha was a daughter identified as a rightful inheritor — of grace, of promise, of godly legacy. It appears in New England church records from the 17th century onward and reached its greatest frequency in the 18th and early 19th centuries.
The name gained literary currency through Jean Webster's beloved 1912 novel Daddy-Long-Legs, in which the heroine Jerusha Abbott — an orphan girl who reinvents herself through education and epistolary wit — gave the name a spirited, modern embodiment that charmed generations of readers. Jerusha today belongs to the category of forgotten Puritan names that reward rediscovery: genuinely ancient, deeply meaningful, with a flowing four-syllable cadence that feels neither stiff nor overly ornate. Its natural nickname Roo or Rue adds a modern softness to an otherwise classical frame.