Is Mason a Biblical Name? No, but the Bible Mentions Masons

No one named Mason appears in the Bible. Mason is an English surname taken from the word for a stoneworker, from Old French masson. The word itself is in the Bible: the King James Version mentions masons several times, including those Hiram, king of Tyre, sent to build David a house (2 Samuel 5:11).

Is Mason a name in the Bible?

Not as a name. No person in the Old or New Testament is called Mason, and the name has no Hebrew or Greek origin. As an ordinary word, “masons” appears in English Bibles for the men who cut and laid stone. The King James Version uses it in 2 Samuel 5:11 and 1 Chronicles 14:1, where Hiram sends David cedar, carpenters and masons; in 1 Chronicles 22:2, where David sets masons to cut stone for the house of God that Solomon would build; in 2 Kings 12:12, 22:6 and 2 Chronicles 24:12, where kings of Judah pay masons to repair the temple; and in Ezra 3:7, where the Jews who returned from exile pay masons to rebuild it.

Several Hebrew words stand behind the English. In 2 Samuel 5:11 the text reads ḥārāšê ʾeben qîr, “craftsmen of stone for walls”; in 1 Chronicles 22:2 it is ḥōṣəḇîm, “hewers”; and in 2 Kings 12:12 it is gōḏərîm, “wall builders.” None of these is a personal name, and Mason has no Hebrew meaning.

One New Testament name looks close to it: Mnason of Cyprus, “an early disciple” who gave Paul and his companions lodging on their journey to Jerusalem (Acts 21:16), has a Greek name, possibly meaning “reminding,” that is unrelated to Mason.

What does Mason mean?

Mason means “stoneworker.” The Online Etymology Dictionary records it as an English surname in the early 12th century and as an ordinary word by about 1200. It came from Old French masson or maçon, probably from a Frankish word related to the English “make,” though some etymologists connect it with the Medieval Latin machio. The same word later gave the Freemasons their name: the fraternity grew out of guilds of working masons and had taken its modern form by 1717. The given name comes from the trade and the surname, not from the society.

Mason has been given to American boys since at least 1880, when it ranked 363rd. Its rise began in the 1980s. It entered the top 100 in 1998, was the second most popular name for boys in 2011 and 2012, and ranked 39th in 2025.

Masons and stonework in the Bible

The Bible’s best-known stonework is the temple in Jerusalem. Solomon’s builders, Hiram’s builders and men from Gebal cut and prepared the stone (1 Kings 5:18), and the stones were dressed at the quarry, “so that neither hammer nor axe nor any tool of iron was heard in the house while it was being built” (1 Kings 6:7). Earlier, Bezalel, the craftsman of the tabernacle, was filled with the Spirit of God for every kind of work, including “cutting stones for setting” (Exodus 31:5). The Hiram whom Solomon brought from Tyre to make the temple’s furnishings was a different man from the king, and his skill, according to 1 Kings 7:14, was “for making any work in bronze.”

The New Testament turns the mason’s work into a picture of the Church. Peter calls Christ the living stone, rejected by men and chosen by God, and then tells believers, “you also, like living stones, are being built into a spiritual house to be a holy priesthood, offering spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ” (1 Peter 2:5). In that building God is the mason, and his people are the stones.

Related reading

• What does stone symbolize in the Bible?
• Is Your Name in the Bible? A Directory of Names