Is Calvin in the Bible?

Calvin is not in the Bible. It comes from Cauvin, the French family name of the Protestant Reformer John Calvin, which goes back to the French word for “bald.” Christians have used Calvin as a first name in his honor since the nineteenth century.

What does the name Calvin mean?

The Reformer was born Jehan Cauvin on 10 July 1509 at Noyon, in Picardy in northern France. Cauvin was his father’s surname: Gérard Cauvin was the cathedral notary at Noyon. The name is related to the French surname Chauvin, which began as a diminutive of chauve, “bald,” so it meant something like “little bald one.” In Latin, the language in which scholars of his day wrote, Cauvin became Calvinus, after the Latin calvus, “bald,” and from that form comes the English Calvin. Because it was an inherited family name, it says nothing about whether the Reformer himself was bald.

In Spanish the Reformer is Juan Calvino, in Portuguese João Calvino and in Indonesian Yohanes Calvin. The usual short form of the first name is Cal.

Is Calvin in the Bible or a Hebrew name?

No. Calvin does not occur in the Bible and has no Hebrew form or meaning. Its Christian associations come from the Reformer. The nearest biblical word is Calvary, the place where Jesus was crucified. Calvary comes from the Latin calvaria, “skull,” a word related to calvus, “bald.” The King James Version uses it once, in Luke 23:33: “And when they were come to the place, which is called Calvary, there they crucified him.” Matthew 27:33 gives the place its Aramaic name, “Golgotha (which means Place of a Skull).”

Who was John Calvin?

Calvin trained as a humanist lawyer and broke with the Roman Catholic Church around 1530. After violence against Protestants in France, he fled to Basel in Switzerland, where in 1536 he published the first edition of his Institutes of the Christian Religion. He led the church in Geneva from 1541 until his death on 27 May 1564, and he wrote commentaries on most books of the Bible.

His record in Geneva includes the case of Michael Servetus, a Spanish physician and theologian who rejected the Trinity. Calvin denounced him, the city council condemned him as a heretic, and he was burned at the stake on 27 October 1553. Calvin had asked the council to behead him instead, and the council refused.

What do Reformed Christians believe?

The churches that follow Calvin’s teaching are called Reformed, or Calvinist. Today they include the Continental Reformed, Presbyterian and Congregational churches, along with parts of the Anglican and Baptist traditions. Reformed Christianity stresses the authority of the Bible and the sovereignty of God, including predestination, God’s choice of those he will save. Reformed teachers point to passages such as Ephesians 1:4–5: “even as he chose us in him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and blameless before him. In love he predestined us for adoption to himself as sons through Jesus Christ, according to the purpose of his will.”

Other Protestants read these passages differently. Arminian theology, which has shaped Methodist, Pentecostal and many Baptist churches, teaches that God extends grace to all people to prepare them for salvation and that this grace can be resisted.

Calvin as a first name

Calvin Coolidge, the 30th president of the United States, was born John Calvin Coolidge Jr. in 1872. The name Calvin had been used in several generations of his family, apparently in honor of John Calvin. Coolidge became president in August 1923, and the name rose from 128th among American boys in 1922 to 82nd in 1923 and 44th in 1924, its highest rank. It has been among the 1,000 most common names for American boys in every year from 1880 to 2025, when it ranked 132nd.

Calvin University in Grand Rapids, Michigan, founded by the Christian Reformed Church on 4 August 1876, is named after the Reformer. So is Calvin, the six-year-old boy in Bill Watterson’s comic strip Calvin and Hobbes, which ran from 1985 to 1995.

Related reading

• Is Your Name in the Bible? A Directory of 231 Names
• Calvinism vs Presbyterianism: Decoding the Differences