Browse by letter
Christian names starting with H
Browse Christian and biblical names starting with H, with meanings, origins, and faith context.
The H cluster contains two catalog entries spanning the Old Testament and the English virtue-name tradition. Hannah (Hebrew Channah, "grace" or "favor") was the mother of the prophet Samuel in 1 Samuel 1, the woman who prayed silently at the tabernacle in Shiloh, was given a son, and dedicated him to God once he was weaned. Her song of thanksgiving in 1 Samuel 2 became the structural model for Mary's Magnificat in Luke 1.
Hope joins the cluster as a virtue name from the same seventeenth-century English Puritan tradition that produced Faith and Grace. The biblical word behind it is the New Testament Greek elpis, the confident expectation of what God has promised but not yet delivered. Romans 8:24 to 25 frames the term theologically: "for we are saved by hope: but hope that is seen is not hope."
Hannah and Hope have both held steady positions in the modern US SSA dataset, with Hannah peaking at #2 in 1998 and Hope sitting reliably in the Top 300.
H names in 2026
Hannah's defining moment was 1998, when she peaked at #2 in US baby names, falling just short of the year's #1, Emily. The Old Testament mother of Samuel held a US Top 10 position from 1995 through 2007, among the strongest sustained runs for any single Hebrew-origin girl's name in modern American naming.
Hannah held a US Top 50 position from roughly 1996 through 2023, falling to #56 in the 2025 SSA data, a stretch among the most durable for any Hebrew-origin girls' name. Hope holds quieter ground at #352, having receded from her 2000s mid-range like several other virtue names in the modern dataset.