Meaning & History

"holder of the heel"

"supplanter"

"may God protect"

From the Latin, which was from the Greek, which was from the Hebrew name. In the Old Testament Jacob (later called Israel ) is the son of Isaac and Rebecca and the father of the twelve founders of the twelve tribes of Israel. He was born holding his twin brother Esau 's heel, and his name is explained as meaningor, because he twice deprived his brother of his rights as the firstborn son (see Genesis 27:36 ). Other theories claim that it is in fact derived from a hypothetical name likemeaning

The English namesandderive from the same source, withcoming from Latin, a later variant of the Latin New Testament form. Unlike English, many languages do not have separate spellings for the two names.

In England,was mainly regarded as a Jewish name during the Middle Ages, though the variantwas used among Christians.came into general use as a Christian name after the Protestant Reformation . In America, although already moderately common, it steadily grew in popularity from the early 1970s to the end of the 1990s, becoming the top ranked name from 1999 to 2012.

A famous bearer was Jacob Grimm (1785-1863), the German linguist and writer who was, with his brother Wilhelm, the author of