Keziah (name)

Keziah or Kezia is a Hebrew name. Keziah was a daughter of Job in the Hebrew Bible.[1] A number of etymologies have been suggested, among them the Hebrew term for the spice tree Cassia.

In the United Kingdom, the name Keziah is now unusual, but it was more common in Victorian times. In 1890, the births of 137 children named Kezia were registered in England; in 1990, only 40 were.[2][3] More recently the name has become unisex despite its origin such as the musician Keziah Jones. Keziah has also found its way into modern literature in the book Keziah Dane by Sue Grafton.[4]

Keziah was also used as a female first name in the United States in the nineteenth century. For example, Keziah Brevard ran a plantation in South Carolina in the 1850s and 60s;[5] Keziah Brower lived on farms near Madison, Wisconsin and Vermillion, Dakota Territory (now South Dakota) in the 1850s, 60s, and 70s.[6] H. P. Lovecraft's The Dreams in the Witch House feature a character named Keziah Mason.

The modern name Keisha is derived from this name.

References
  1. Job 42:14 GOD blessed Job’s later life even more than his earlier life. And he called the name of the first daughter Jemimah, and the name of the second Keziah, and the name of the third Keren-happuch.
  2. ancestry.com
  3. names.darkgreener.com/#keziah
  4. Kleber, John E. (2001). The Encyclopedia of Louisville. University Press of Kentucky. p. 521. ISBN 978-0-8131-2100-0.
  5. John Hammond Moore, ed. A Plantation Mistress on the Eve of the Civil War: The Diary of Keziah Goodwyn Hopkins Brevard, 1860–1861 (University of South Carolina Press, 1996).
  6. Laura Bower Van Nuys, The Family Band: From the Missouri to the Black Hills, 1881–1900 (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1961), pp. xvii–xviii.
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