Annabel Is Not in the Bible — but the Anna in It Points Somewhere Real

Annabel is not in the Bible. It arose in medieval Scotland as a variant of Amabel — the Latin amabilis, “lovable” — and the spelling was later altered as though it were Anna joined to the French belle, beautiful.

So the “Anna” in Annabel is a mistake. But it is a mistake that points at somebody real, and she is one of the loveliest figures in the Gospels.

What does the name Annabel mean?

Lovable, by descent. Annabel comes from Amabel, which comes from the Roman Amabilis — the same root that gives us Mabel. It appears in Scotland in the Middle Ages and has been there ever since.

The re-spelling came afterwards. Someone heard Anna and belle in the sounds, and the letters shifted to match what people thought they were hearing. It is a folk etymology, and the honest thing is to say so.

Is Annabel in the Bible?

No. Not in Hebrew, Greek or Latin Scripture, and not under Amabel. Medieval Scotland is a very long way from the world of the New Testament.

But Anna is there. And since generations have heard her name inside this one, let us go and meet her.

Anna, who was waiting

She appears for three verses in Luke’s second chapter and then is gone.

There was also a prophet, Anna, the daughter of Penuel, of the tribe of Asher. She was very old; she had lived with her husband seven years after her marriage, and then was a widow until she was eighty-four. She never left the temple but worshiped night and day, fasting and praying.

Let us do the arithmetic Luke invites. Married young, widowed after seven years, and then decades alone — a lifetime of them — spent in the temple courts, praying at hours when nobody was watching.

In that world a widow without sons had no standing and no security. She had no reason to expect anything. And she kept showing up.

The moment she had been waiting for

Then Mary and Joseph come in with a forty-day-old baby to make the offering the law required of poor families — two birds, because they could not afford a lamb.

And Anna, at that very moment, comes up to them.

She gave thanks to God and spoke about the child to all who were looking forward to the redemption of Jerusalem.

That is the whole of it. She recognised him. In a crowded temple, among a great many babies, an eighty-four-year-old widow looked at the child of a poor couple and knew.

Sixty years of praying, and the payment was one afternoon.

For the long middle of a life

Most of us will spend far more time in Anna’s decades than in her afternoon.

There are years of turning up — to the same prayers, the same duties, the same quiet faithfulness that nobody records and nothing visibly rewards. Scripture does not pretend those years are exciting. It simply notes, in passing, that she did it for sixty of them.

And when the moment came, she was the one in the room.

That is the argument for the long middle. Not that it will be rewarded on any schedule we choose, but that people who keep showing up are the ones present when something happens.

A blessing for Annabel

May she be lovable, as her true root says, and beautiful in the way her re-spelling hoped.

May she have Anna’s stamina for the years when nothing is arriving.

And may she recognise him when he comes — in the form he actually takes, which in that temple was somebody else’s baby, carried by a family who could not afford a lamb.

Related reading

• Mabel Is Not in the Bible — It Means “Lovable”
• Is Your Name in the Bible? A Directory of 231 Names
• Amanda Is Not in the Bible: A Name That Means “Worthy of Love”