Vanessa Is Not in the Bible — but Half of It Is Esther

Vanessa is not in the Bible — but half of it was taken from a woman who is.

This is one of the very few names in the world whose inventor, date and reason we know exactly. Jonathan Swift made it up in 1726, for a poem, out of the name of his friend Esther Vanhomrigh: the Van of her surname and the Essa of her first name, which was Esther.

What does the name Vanessa mean?

Strictly, nothing. It was not derived; it was assembled. Swift rearranged the opening syllables of his friend’s names in Cadenus and Vanessa, and the word escaped the poem and went out into the world.

Three hundred years later, millions of women carry a name a satirist coined for someone he was fond of.

We might pause on how strange and lovely that is. Most names arrive worn smooth by centuries. This one has an author, a date and an affection behind it.

Is Vanessa in the Bible?

No. Not in any language, and there is no Hebrew root, because there is no root at all — the name did not exist before the eighteenth century.

But Esther is there, with a book of her own. And since the second half of Vanessa is Esther, it is worth going to see what sort of woman it points back to.

Esther, who had a choice

The story is not a gentle one, and we should not make it gentle.

A Jewish girl is taken into a Persian king’s harem and becomes queen without ever having been asked whether she wanted any of it. She keeps her people secret. And then a decree goes out for the extermination of every Jew in the empire, and her cousin Mordecai sends word that she must go to the king and plead — knowing that entering the throne room uninvited was punishable by death.

She hesitates. Scripture lets her hesitate, which is one of the reasons we can trust it.

And Mordecai’s answer is one of the great sentences in the Bible, because it does not flatter her at all: if you remain silent at this time, relief and deliverance for the Jews will arise from another place, but you and your father’s family will perish.

God will save his people, he says. The only question is whether you will be part of it.

She goes. If I perish, I perish.

The book where God is not mentioned

Here is the detail most readers never notice, and it changes everything.

The book of Esther does not contain the word God. Not once. No miracle, no prophet, no burning bush — just a frightened young woman, a series of coincidences that are slightly too neat, and a decision made without any voice from heaven telling her it would work.

For those of us who have waited for a clear sign and had to act without one, that book was put in the Bible on purpose.

For everyone who carries the name

Vanessa: an invented name, half of it Esther.

May we be willing to act when we cannot hear anything, which is most of the time.

And may we hold lightly the idea that our name must be ancient to mean something. This one was made up by a man for his friend three centuries ago, and it has been spoken over cradles ever since. God has never required a pedigree. He is, after all, still making new things.

Related reading

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• Sandra Is Not in the Bible — but Alexander Appears Five Times