What “canon-dependent” means
Most names on this site have a fixed relationship to Scripture. Elijah is a named person in books that every major Christian tradition treats as canonical, so his name is a direct biblical person regardless of which Bible you open. Canon-dependent is different. It describes a name whose biblical status genuinely changes depending on which Christian canon you use, because the figure who carries it appears only in books that some traditions count as Scripture and others do not.
Raphael is the clearest case. The archangel Raphael is named in the Book of Tobit (Tobit 12:15), where he says, “I am Raphael, one of the seven holy angels.” Tobit is part of the Old Testament for Catholic and Eastern Orthodox Christians. It is not part of the Hebrew Bible, and Protestant canons place it in the Apocrypha or leave it out. So the honest answer to “is Raphael a biblical name?” is not a flat yes or no. It depends on the canon, and the difference is real rather than a matter of opinion about one shared text.
How the canon lists differ
The traditions agree on far more than they differ on. The disagreement is limited to a specific set of Old Testament books and a handful of additions to books they share. Here is the scope, stated plainly and without arguing for any one arrangement.
The Catholic Old Testament includes seven books beyond the Hebrew canon: Tobit, Judith, Wisdom (the Wisdom of Solomon), Sirach (Ecclesiasticus), Baruch, and 1 and 2 Maccabees, along with additions to Esther and Daniel. Catholic tradition calls these the deuterocanonical books, meaning a second grouping recognized as canonical. This was affirmed for Catholics at the Council of Trent in 1546.
Eastern Orthodox Old Testaments include the same deuterocanonical books and count several more, such as 1 Esdras, 3 Maccabees, and Psalm 151, with 4 Maccabees often printed as an appendix. Orthodox canon lists are somewhat broader still and vary between the Greek, Slavonic, and other Orthodox traditions. The Ethiopian Orthodox canon is broader again and includes books such as 1 Enoch.
The Protestant Old Testament follows the Hebrew canon, which does not contain these books. Reformation-era Protestants grouped them under the heading Apocrypha, meaning hidden or set apart, and later Protestant Bibles commonly exclude them. The distinction is one of terminology as much as content: what Catholics call deuterocanonical, Protestants generally call apocryphal.
The KJV 1611 sits in the middle of this history. The original 1611 King James Bible printed the Apocrypha as a distinct section between the Old and New Testaments, neither mixed into the Old Testament nor omitted. Many later printings dropped that section, which is why modern KJV Bibles often contain no Apocrypha. The book was in the 1611 edition; its removal came afterward.
Where a given figure actually appears
Because the answer turns on specific books, it helps to say exactly which text names a figure.
Raphael is named only in Tobit, at Tobit 12:15. He does not appear in any book of the Hebrew or Protestant canon. Tobias, the young man Raphael guides in the same book, and Judith, the heroine of the Book of Judith, are further canon-dependent names on the same footing: biblical in the Catholic and Orthodox Old Testament, apocryphal or absent in the Protestant one.
Uriel shows a subtler pattern. The archangel Uriel appears in 2 Esdras (also called 4 Ezra) and in 1 Enoch, both outside the common canon; 2 Esdras sits in the Slavonic Bible and 1 Enoch in the Ethiopian Orthodox canon. But a Levite named Uriel appears in 1 Chronicles (6:24; 15:5), a book every tradition treats as canonical. So Uriel is a canonical name through the Levite even though its famous archangelic bearer is canon-dependent. That is why Uriel and Raphael classify differently on the site’s scripture axis despite both being angel names.
What this means for “is X a biblical name?”
The site’s job is to answer that question accurately, not to settle which canon is correct. For a canon-dependent name, the accurate answer has a shape rather than a single word: the figure is named in a specific book; that book is Scripture in these traditions and not in those; here is the scope. You can see this on the Raphael figure page, which records the canon scope directly rather than declaring the name biblical or not.
This keeps the site neutral. A Catholic or Orthodox reader can see that Raphael is a scriptural name in their tradition. A Protestant reader can see that Tobit is not in their Old Testament and that the name is used for its Hebrew etymology and long Christian heritage rather than a canonical appearance. Both are told the same facts. For the archangels specifically, biblical angel names reads Michael, Gabriel, Raphael, and Uriel together while keeping each name’s canonical scope distinct.
This page draws on the canon lists of the Catholic (Council of Trent), Eastern Orthodox, and Protestant traditions, the contents of the 1611 King James Bible, and standard reference works on the biblical canon. Scripture references follow the KJV numbering. For how the site sources and cites its classifications, see the methodology page.