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Japanese No one named Brooke appears in the Bible. Brooke comes from an English surname for someone who lived near a brook, a small stream, and it came into use as a girls’ name in the 1950s. It has no Hebrew or Greek meaning, but English Bibles use the word brook for several streams.
Where does the name Brooke come from?
Behind the Name lists Brooke as a variant of Brook, from an English surname given to a person who lived near a brook. The word goes back to the Old English broc, “flowing stream, torrent.” Like many English surnames, it first described where a family lived and only much later became a first name.
According to Behind the Name, Brooke came into use as a first name in the 1950s, probably influenced by the American socialite Brooke Astor (1902–2007), and was made more popular by the actress Brooke Shields (born 1965).
What does Brooke mean in the Bible?
The name has no meaning in the Bible, because it does not occur there. The word brook does. The Hebrew word it most often translates is nachal, which can mean either a stream or the narrow valley it runs through. Many such streams in the land of Israel flowed only in winter or after heavy rain.
One of these streams is the brook Cherith, east of the Jordan. During a drought God sent the prophet Elijah to hide there and told him, “You shall drink from the brook, and I have commanded the ravens to feed you there” (1 Kings 17:4). The ravens brought him bread and meat morning and evening, “and after a while the brook dried up, because there was no rain in the land” (1 Kings 17:7).
The brook Kidron runs past Jerusalem, between the Temple Mount and the Mount of Olives. Jesus crossed it on the night of his arrest: “he went out with his disciples across the brook Kidron, where there was a garden” (John 18:1). John’s Greek word for the stream, cheimarros, means one that flows in winter.
In the King James Version the word also appears in the opening of Psalm 42: “As the hart panteth after the water brooks, so panteth my soul after thee, O God.” The Hebrew word there is a different one, aphiq, a channel, and modern translations such as the English Standard Version have “flowing streams.”
How popular is Brooke?
Brooke first appeared among the 1,000 most common names for American girls in 1953. It jumped from 175th in 1976 to 52nd in 1981, fell back to around 100th for most of the 1980s, and climbed again in the 1990s. Its highest rank was 43rd, in 2003. It has declined since and ranked 313th in 2025.
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