Eliphas

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. A masculine first name of biblical origin, carried by people such as the nineteenth-century French occultist known as Lévi
2. A male given name with Hebrew roots, borne by historical figures including the French writer on magic Alphonse Louis Constant
3. Used as a man's forename, notably by the nineteenth-century French mystic who wrote under the pen name Lévi

Etymology: Eliphas is a proper name, and its most famous bearer is not the man it was given to. In the Book of Job, Eliphaz the Temanite is one of the three friends who come to comfort Job and end up lecturing him, and the name appears there in the Hebrew form "Eliphaz." Eliphas is the Latinized spelling that became familiar in Western occult writing: the French occultist Alphonse Louis Constant adopted "Éliphas Lévi" as his pen name in the 1850s, and English-speaking readers met the name mostly through him. The Hebrew name is generally explained as combining "El," meaning "God," with a second element whose meaning is uncertain, so scholars do not agree on a firm translation. Because the name's roots are obscure, any gloss such as "my God is gold" should be treated as a guess rather than established fact. Constant chose the Latinized form partly because it sounded learned and partly as a nod to the Hebrew tradition he drew on in his writings on magic and the Kabbalah. The spelling "Eliphas" with an s, rather than the biblical z, is the form that stuck in those circles.