🔼The name Adin: Summary
- Meaning
- Delightful, Luxurious
- Etymology
- From the noun עדן ('eden), delight, finery or luxury.
🔼The name Adin in the Bible
There's only one Adin in the Bible. He's mentioned among the family heads who returned from Babylon with Nehemiah (Ezra 2:15, 8:6, Nehemiah 7:20) and who signed the covenant (Nehemiah 10:16).
🔼Etymology of the name Adin
The name Adin seems to be related to the Hebrew noun עדן ('eden), meaning delight, finery or luxury:
עדן
Root עדן ('eden) has to do with free exchange of broadly diverse information, services and goods — which is where wealth comes from, in the modern understanding of economy. Nouns עדן ('eden), עדנה ('edna) and מעדן (ma'adan) mean delight, finery or luxury. Adjective עדין ('adin) means delightful or luxurious. Verb עדן ('adan) means to luxuriate or to delight.
🔼Adin meaning
Alfred Jones (Dictionary of Old Testament Proper Names), proposes an entire new Hebrew root עדן to correspond with an Arabic verb meaning to be flexible or to vacillate, and its derived adjective meaning softness or laxity. Hence the bosom of Babylon's daughter (Isaiah 47:8), in the eyes of Alfred Jones, becomes "soft, tender" and the name Adin acquires the meaning of Soft.
NOBSE Study Bible Name List too follows this word's noteworthy tendency to stick to women and their desires or pleasures, and reads into the name Adin the meaning of Effeminate.
Here at Abarim Publications we see no reason to type-cast these words into femdom. The name Adin means Delightful or Luxurious.