Is Lucy in the Bible? No, It Comes from the Latin Lucia, Meaning Light

No one in the Bible is named Lucy. The name is the English form of Lucia, a Latin name made from lux, “light,” and it became a Christian name through Saint Lucy of Syracuse, a martyr of about 304. The masculine form, Lucius, does appear in the New Testament.

Is Lucy a name in the Bible?

Neither Lucy nor Lucia, nor the Spanish Lucía or the French Lucie, appears anywhere in Scripture, whether in the original Hebrew and Greek or in translation. The name is Latin, and none of the books of the Bible was first written in Latin.

The nearest Bible name is Lucius, the Roman name of which Lucia is the feminine. Acts lists “Lucius of Cyrene” among the prophets and teachers of the church at Antioch, alongside Barnabas and Saul (Acts 13:1), and Paul’s letter to the Romans sends greetings from a Lucius whom Paul counts among his fellow Jews (Romans 16:21). Spanish Bibles spell the name Lucio, and Portuguese Bibles Lúcio.

What does Lucy mean?

Lucy means “light.” Lucius was the most common Roman given name, and it came from the Latin lux, “light”; Lucia is its feminine form. Lucy is the English form, used in England since the 12th century, when it was also spelled Luce. Lucille is a French form of Lucilla, a Roman diminutive of Lucia, so it is a smaller form of the same name.

Lucy has no Hebrew origin and so no Hebrew meaning. The Hebrew word for light is or (אוֹר), the word God speaks in Genesis 1:3: “Let there be light,” and there was light. A Hebrew name with the same sense is Uri, “my light,” the name of Bezalel\’s father (Exodus 31:2).

Is Lucy short for Lucifer?

No. Lucy and Lucifer share the Latin root lux, but Lucy comes from Lucia, not from Lucifer. Lucifer is a Latin word meaning “light-bringer,” from lux and ferre, “to bring,” and it first named the morning star, the planet Venus.

The Latin Vulgate used the word in Isaiah 14:12 to translate the Hebrew hêlēl, “shining one,” in a taunt against the king of Babylon (Isaiah 14:4). The King James Version kept it: “How art thou fallen from heaven, O Lucifer, son of the morning!” Most modern translations have “morning star.” Christian tradition later read the passage as a picture of the devil’s fall, and Lucifer became a name for Satan. The Vulgate uses the same word in 2 Peter 1:19 in its first sense, for the morning star that rises in believers’ hearts.

Saint Lucy of Syracuse

The name spread through the Church because of Lucy, or Lucia, of Syracuse in Sicily, who was put to death in the persecution under the emperor Diocletian, in 304 by the usual date. The account of her life, probably written in the fifth century, says she had vowed her virginity to God, persuaded her mother to give much of the family’s wealth to the poor, and was denounced to the governor by the man she had been promised to in marriage. Attempts to drag her to a brothel and to burn her failed, and she was killed with a sword. The Catholic Encyclopedia warns that these details cannot be accepted without criticism, though the place and time of her death are hardly in doubt. Medieval versions add that her eyes were put out. For that reason she is the patron saint of the blind, and painters often show her holding her eyes on a dish.

Lucy is one of the eight women, the Virgin Mary among them, named in the Roman Canon of the Mass. Catholic and Orthodox Christians both keep her feast on 13 December. In the late Middle Ages, under the old Julian calendar, that date usually fell on the shortest day of the year, and her feast became a festival of light. In Sweden and the rest of Scandinavia, girls dressed as Saint Lucy, in white dresses with red sashes and crowns of candles, walk in procession on her day carrying saffron buns and cookies, a custom kept in its modern form since 1928.

Dante gave Lucia a part in the Divine Comedy. In the Inferno she carries the Virgin Mary’s message to Beatrice that sends Virgil to Dante’s aid, and in the Purgatorio she carries the sleeping Dante to the entrance of Purgatory. C. S. Lewis’s Lucy Pevensie, the youngest of the four children in the Narnia books and the first to find the way through the wardrobe, was named after his goddaughter, Lucy Barfield.

Light in the Bible

Light, the meaning of the name, is one of the Bible’s common images for God and his people. Jesus says, “I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me will never walk in darkness, but will have the light of life” (John 8:12), and he tells his disciples, “You are the light of the world. A town built on a hill cannot be hidden” (Matthew 5:14). Revelation describes the new Jerusalem as a city that “does not need the sun or the moon to shine on it, for the glory of God gives it light, and the Lamb is its lamp” (Revelation 21:23).

Is Lucy a Christian name?

Lucy is not a biblical name, but it has been a Christian name since the early Church honored Saint Lucy, and devotion to her carried it through Christian Europe in many spellings. In the United States it has been climbing since the mid-1990s. In 2025 it ranked 24th among girls’ names, its highest place since national records began in 1880.

Related reading

• Is Lucille a Name in the Bible? No, It Is a Small Light
• Why is Jesus called the Light of the World?
• Lucifer vs. Satan: what is the difference?
• Is Your Name in the Bible? A Directory of 231 Names