Isaac
What does the name Isaac mean?
The meaning of the name “Isaac” is: “Laughter; the laughing one;”.
Additional information: Isaac is a masculine name from the Hebrew Yitzchak that means ‘he laughs’, and it is the name of the son of Abraham and Sarah, the husband of Rebecca and the father of Jacob and Esau in the Old Testament. Sarah could not bear children and was already very aged at the time of his conception. She chose the name Isaac because she had laughed at the messengers of God announcing that she would finally have a son.
The name was more common among Jewish people until the Protestant Reformation, when biblical names such as Isaac, Joshua, and Noah became much more widespread. As a Hebrew name it has other Hebrew variants because of the different ways to Anglicise its spelling – Itzhak and Yitzchak are two alternative ways to spell Isaac. The name Sarina is a feminine Hebrew name that means ‘One Who Laughs’, making it a suitable alternative for Isaac. Common nicknames for Isaac are Ike, Ise, Izzy, and Sekel, and foreign language variants include Sahak (Armenian), Isaak (German), and Izsák (Hungarian). Isaac is sometimes misspelled as ‘Issac’, ‘Isac’, and ‘Isacc’.
The name Isaac was in the top hundred boys names in the United States during much of the latter part of the nineteenth century, but then its usage dwindled until it could barely reach the top two hundred names for boys. It wasn’t until the nineties that its popularity began to grow again; Isaac has remained in the top fifty names since 2001, and it was the 31st most popular name in 2014. Isaac has seen similar popularity trends in England and Wales, and became the 25th most popular name for boys in 2014.
Famous celebrities with the name Isaac include Isaac Asimov (American science fiction author), Isaac Lee Hayes, Jr. (American singer-songwriter, actor, and producer), and Sir Isaac Newton (physicist and mathematician) who developed three laws of motion - the basis of modern engineering and Isaac Singer who founded the Singer Sewing Machine Company. Fictional characters with the name Isaac are Isaac Mendez from the television series Heroes, Isaac Davis from the film Manhattan, and Isaac Kleiner from the Half-Life video game series.
Modern legend says that Isaac Newton was the inventor of the cat door, but this actually came from a different contemporary legend – that Isaac Newton, when his cat had kittens, had a second cat hole cut into the door for the kittens to go through, not considering that the kittens could just go through the larger hole.
The name was more common among Jewish people until the Protestant Reformation, when biblical names such as Isaac, Joshua, and Noah became much more widespread. As a Hebrew name it has other Hebrew variants because of the different ways to Anglicise its spelling – Itzhak and Yitzchak are two alternative ways to spell Isaac. The name Sarina is a feminine Hebrew name that means ‘One Who Laughs’, making it a suitable alternative for Isaac. Common nicknames for Isaac are Ike, Ise, Izzy, and Sekel, and foreign language variants include Sahak (Armenian), Isaak (German), and Izsák (Hungarian). Isaac is sometimes misspelled as ‘Issac’, ‘Isac’, and ‘Isacc’.
The name Isaac was in the top hundred boys names in the United States during much of the latter part of the nineteenth century, but then its usage dwindled until it could barely reach the top two hundred names for boys. It wasn’t until the nineties that its popularity began to grow again; Isaac has remained in the top fifty names since 2001, and it was the 31st most popular name in 2014. Isaac has seen similar popularity trends in England and Wales, and became the 25th most popular name for boys in 2014.
Famous celebrities with the name Isaac include Isaac Asimov (American science fiction author), Isaac Lee Hayes, Jr. (American singer-songwriter, actor, and producer), and Sir Isaac Newton (physicist and mathematician) who developed three laws of motion - the basis of modern engineering and Isaac Singer who founded the Singer Sewing Machine Company. Fictional characters with the name Isaac are Isaac Mendez from the television series Heroes, Isaac Davis from the film Manhattan, and Isaac Kleiner from the Half-Life video game series.
Modern legend says that Isaac Newton was the inventor of the cat door, but this actually came from a different contemporary legend – that Isaac Newton, when his cat had kittens, had a second cat hole cut into the door for the kittens to go through, not considering that the kittens could just go through the larger hole.
