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Japanese No one named Devon appears in the Bible. As a first name, Devon is a form of Devin, which comes from an Irish or English surname, and it also recalls the English county of Devon, named after the Dumnonii, a Celtic people. It has no Hebrew meaning.
Where does the name Devon come from?
Behind the Name treats Devon as a variant of Devin, a first name taken from a surname. The Irish surname Devin is an English form of the Gaelic surnames Ó Damháin and Ó Dubháin. The English surname Devin began as a nickname from the Old French devin, meaning “divine” or “seer, fortune-teller,” which comes from the Latin divinus. Devan, Deven and Devyn are other spellings of the same name.
The county of Devon, in southwest England, may also have shaped the name. It takes its name from the Dumnonii, the British people who lived in the southwestern peninsula when the Romans conquered Britain. Their name is usually explained as “deep valley dwellers,” from a Celtic root, dubno- or dumno-, meaning “deep,” though the root may instead mean “the earth.” The explanation goes back at least to the antiquary William Camden, who wrote in 1607 that the people “dwell for the most part beneath in Vales.” In Welsh the county is Dyfnaint, “deep valleys.”
Davion is a separate name. Behind the Name describes it as an American creation of the early 1970s, built on the sounds of names such as David and Darian, and does not connect it with Devon.
What does Devon mean in the Bible?
The Bible never mentions anyone called Devon, so the name has no biblical meaning. It is not a Hebrew name and has no Hebrew form.
One of its sources does lead back to a word in the Latin Bible. The Old French devin, behind the English surname Devin, comes from the Latin divinus, and the Vulgate, the Latin Bible of the Western Church, uses that word in both of its senses. In Deuteronomy 18:14 Moses tells Israel that the nations it is about to drive out “listen to fortune-tellers and to diviners. But as for you, the Lord your God has not allowed you to do this.” The Latin word for diviners there is divinos. In 2 Peter 1:4 believers are promised that they “may become partakers of the divine nature,” in Latin divinae consortes naturae.
Is Devon a boy’s or a girl’s name?
It has been used for both. American records show Devon among the 1,000 most common boys’ names from 1960, rising to 117th in 1994; it ranked 961st in 2024. As a girls’ name it ranked from 1977 to 2005 and reached its highest place, 233rd, in 1991. Devin followed a similar path and was more common, reaching 58th for boys in 1995.
The name has two pronunciations. The usual English one is DEV-ən, like the county. As an African American name Devon is often stressed on the second syllable, də-VAHN, and Behind the Name suggests it may have been chosen for its likeness to names such as Trevon and Javon.
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