Hagar

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. The Egyptian servant of Sarah who bore Abraham a son named Ishmael in the Book of Genesis
2. An Egyptian slave woman in the Old Testament, given to Abraham by his wife Sarah, and mother of Ishmael
3. A servant figure from the book of Genesis, an Egyptian maidservant whose son Ishmael became the ancestor of the Arab peoples

Etymology: Hagar is a figure from the Hebrew Bible: an Egyptian servant of Sarah, and the mother of Ishmael by Abraham. The name appears in the Hebrew text as הָגָר, and the word that English took from it is simply the Hebrew for "stranger." That meaning fits her story, since she is an outsider in Abraham's household and is sent into the wilderness with her son. The same root appears in Arabic as هَاجَر (hājar), which is the form familiar in the name of the Hijra, a related but distinct word for migration. Hagar lives on in English as a name for the biblical woman, and the word carries the sense of a woman who was an outsider and wanderer. Its meaning rests entirely on the Hebrew term for "stranger," which is the root of the whole story.