Abigail · Daily fortune

Abigail is a feminine name of Hebrew origin. It comes from אֲבִיגָיִל (Avigayil), which Behind the Name glosses as "my father is joy" and Wikipedia as "my father's joy", from av ("father") and gil ("joy"). In the Old Testament Abigail is the wife of Nabal who, after his death, becomes a wife of King David. The name became common in English after the Protestant Reformation and was popular with the Puritans, but from the 17th century it turned into a slang term for a servant and went out of fashion, only to be revived in the 20th century. It ranked #41 for girls in the United States in 2025.

Behind the Name derives Abigail from the Hebrew name אֲבִיגָיִל (ʾAviḡayil), "my father is joy", from the roots אָב (ʾav) "father" and גִּיל (gil) "joy", and lists the elements as ʾav + i + gil. Wikipedia gives the same Biblical Hebrew form, rendered "my father's joy" (alternatively "my father is exulted" or "my father is joyful"), and says the second element comes either from the verbal root g-y-l "to rejoice" directly or from the noun gil "rejoicing, joy". The two sources agree on the elements and differ only in how they phrase the compound in English.

In the Old Testament Abigail is the wife of Nabal; after Nabal's death she becomes, in Behind the Name's words, the third wife of King David. Wikipedia describes her as an intelligent, beautiful and loyal woman in the Book of Samuel and notes a second biblical Abigail, the mother of Amasa, commander of Absalom's army (2 Samuel 17:25). As an English name, Behind the Name says, Abigail first became common after the Protestant Reformation and was popular among the Puritans. Because the biblical Abigail refers to herself as a servant, the name became, from the 17th century, a slang term for a servant, especially after the play The Scornful Lady (1616), which featured a character named Abigail. The name went out of fashion at that point and was revived in the 20th century. Wikipedia's list of bearers includes two American First Ladies, Abigail Adams (1744–1818) and Abigail Fillmore (1798–1853).

Abigail ranked #41 for girls in the United States in 2025 (Social Security Administration), matching the rank recorded on Behind the Name for that year. Behind the Name's history describes the arc behind that number: common after the Reformation, out of fashion from the 17th century when it became a byword for a servant, and revived in the 20th century. The Wikipedia article consulted carries no ranking data, so no other national figures are given here.

English Abigail is /ˈæb.ɪ.ɡeɪl/, three syllables with the stress on the first; Behind the Name and Wikipedia agree. The other forms below are the ones Behind the Name lists under other languages and cultures; their pronunciations were not verified in this pass.

Abigail reads as a biblical classic with a colonial-American accent: Puritan use, two First Ladies, and a plain, sturdy sound. Its short form Abby is so established that many bearers go by it exclusively, which makes the full name feel like a formal reserve rather than a daily label. The 17th-century 'servant' sense is long dead and is now a piece of trivia rather than a drawback. Parents drawn to it often shortlist other revived Old Testament girls' names such as Hannah, Leah, Naomi and Elizabeth.

The name's story runs from the Book of Samuel through Puritan New England to modern actresses and athletes. The people below are the ones named in the Behind the Name and Wikipedia entries consulted for this profile; Wikipedia's long lists of bearers and fictional characters were sampled only at their beginning.

Names that share Abigail's Old Testament origin, its revived-classic register, or its sound and short forms.