Dominic Is Not in the Bible — but It Means “Of the Lord”

Dominic is not in the Bible, but it comes closer than almost any name on this site. It is the Late Latin Dominicus, and it means of the Lord.

Traditionally it was given to children born on a Sunday — because Sunday, in Latin, is dies dominica, the Lord’s day. The name and the day are the same word.

What does the name Dominic mean?

Of the Lord. Belonging to him.

Dominus is the Latin word our older Bibles use wherever the Greek says Kyrios and the Hebrew says Adonai — Lord. So while Dominic itself is not Scripture, the root of it is the word the Church has used for God in the West for sixteen centuries.

Several saints have carried it, most famously the thirteenth-century founder of the Dominicans, and the name entered England in his honour.

Is Dominic in the Bible?

Not as a person’s name. Latin naming conventions are later than the New Testament, and there is no Hebrew form.

But the phrase is everywhere, because “of the Lord” is one of the most frequently repeated constructions in Scripture. The day of the Lord. The word of the Lord. The angel of the Lord. The servant of the Lord.

And once, memorably, a young woman describing herself.

“I am the Lord’s servant”

Gabriel has just told Mary something impossible and frightening, and her reply is the sentence the whole Church has repeated ever since.

I am the Lord’s servant. May your word to me be fulfilled.

In Latin: ecce ancilla Domini. Behold the handmaid of the Lord.

She does not say she understands. She had asked a sensible question a moment earlier and received an answer that explained very little. What she says is whose she is.

That is what a name like Dominic claims, and it is a large claim: not that we have worked something out, but that we belong to somebody.

The Lord’s day

And the Sunday connection is worth keeping, because it has been quietly lost.

The first Christians did not move their day of worship to Sunday for convenience. They moved it because that was the day the tomb was found empty, and they wanted the week itself to say so. Every seventh day, the calendar makes the claim again.

In much of Europe the name survives in the word: domenica, domingo, dimanche. A whole day named the Lord’s, and children born on it named after the day.

A blessing for Dominic

May we be able to say what Mary said, in the weeks when we understand nothing: not that it makes sense, but that we are his.

May our Sundays be what they were named for.

And may we carry the name lightly, since it was never a description of our qualities — only of whose we are.

Related reading

• Is Your Name in the Bible? A Directory of 231 Names
• Jean Is in the Bible — It Is the French John, “God Is Gracious”
• Natalia Is Not in the Bible — It Means “Born at Christmas”