Merab is a Hebrew biblical name meaning 'increase' or 'abundance.'
Merab is one of the oldest names in this collection, its first appearance occurring in the Hebrew Bible — the Old Testament — as the elder daughter of King Saul, the first king of Israel. In the First Book of Samuel, Merab is promised in marriage to the young David as a reward for his valor against Goliath, a promise Saul ultimately breaks, giving her instead to a man named Adriel. The name's etymology in Hebrew connects to the root r-b-h, meaning to increase, to multiply, to be great — making Merab a name that carries connotations of abundance and growth, a blessing rather than a description.
For most of Western history, Merab remained a name found almost exclusively in scholarly and religious contexts — biblical commentaries, genealogical lists, the occasional Puritan family in seventeenth-century England or New England, where Old Testament names enjoyed a significant revival as part of a deliberate cultural program of identifying with ancient Israel. The Puritans named their children Merab, Kezia, Zipporah, and Manoah as assertions of spiritual seriousness and scriptural knowledge. In recent decades, Merab has experienced a quiet renaissance driven by parents seeking names that are genuinely ancient and documented yet rare in modern usage.
It appears in contemporary literature — most notably in David Grossman's celebrated Israeli novel "To the End of the Land," which engages deeply with biblical naming culture — and has drawn attention from parents in both Jewish and Christian communities who want a name with scriptural weight that doesn't appear in every kindergarten class. Merab is a name of considerable dignity: short, strong, and three thousand years old.