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Japanese Jeffrey is not in the Bible. It is a medieval spelling of Geoffrey, a name the Normans brought to England from France. The second half of the name comes from the Old German fridu, “peace.” What the first half meant is disputed, so Jeffrey has no single agreed meaning.
What does Jeffrey mean?
Geoffrey is the Norman French form of a Frankish name. Name scholars agree that its second part is fridu, “peace.” For the first part they have proposed gawi, “territory”; walah, “foreigner”; the name of the Geats, a North Germanic tribe; and gisal, “hostage” or “pledge.” The French scholar Albert Dauzat rejected “foreigner” and “hostage” because the sounds of those words could not have produced the name. More than one older name may have merged into Geoffrey. Some references treat it as a form of Godfrey, made from got, “God,” and fridu; others, Dauzat among them, treat Geoffrey and Godfrey as separate names that were later confused.
Jeffrey is often said to mean “peaceful ruler,” but that is the meaning of Frederick, from fridu and rih, “ruler.” The other common explanation, “God’s peace,” is the meaning of Godfrey, and it fits Jeffrey only if Geoffrey began as a form of that name.
The Normans made Geoffrey common among the English nobility. Two famous medieval bearers were the 12th-century chronicler Geoffrey of Monmouth and the 14th-century poet Geoffrey Chaucer, author of The Canterbury Tales. The name had become uncommon by the end of the Middle Ages and was revived in the 20th century, often in the spelling Jeffrey. Jeffrey is the more common spelling in America, Geoffrey in Britain. Jeffery is a variant, Jeff the short form, and Jefferson an English surname meaning “son of Jeffrey,” now usually given in honor of Thomas Jefferson.
Is Jeffrey in the Bible?
No one in the Bible is named Jeffrey, Geoffrey or Jeff. The name is Germanic, not Hebrew, Greek or Latin, and it has no Hebrew form or Hebrew meaning. It came into use long after the books of the Bible were written.
A Bible name that means peace
The Bible’s best-known name built on the word for peace is Solomon. In Hebrew he is Shelomo, from shalom, “peace.” In 1 Chronicles, David tells his son that God had refused to let him build the temple because he had waged great wars, and then had promised: “Behold, a son shall be born to you who shall be a man of rest. I will give him rest from all his surrounding enemies. For his name shall be Solomon, and I will give peace and quiet to Israel in his days” (1 Chronicles 22:9). Solomon, and not David, built the temple in Jerusalem.
Is there a Saint Jeffrey?
No saint is widely known as Saint Jeffrey or Saint Geoffrey, and Jeffrey has no religious meaning of its own. The nearest is Godfrey of Amiens (1066–1115), a bishop of Amiens who is a saint of the Catholic Church. In French his name is Geoffroy d’Amiens, and his feast is 8 November.
How popular is Jeffrey?
Jeffrey entered the list of the 1,000 most common names for American boys in 1934. It was among the 20 most common every year from 1959 to 1978, reaching 9th place in 1966. It ranked 552nd in 2025.
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