Every year the Social Security Administration highlights names that have jumped more than 75 spots in the past year. On that list this year? The Jewish baby name Azriel.
What’s Jewish about the name Azriel?
Azriel is a Hebrew name meaning “God is my help.” A minor biblical character, Azriel was a member of one of the tribes of Israel. Later, a prominent Kabbalist was named Azriel of Gerona.
Isn’t Azriel the angel of death?
Though many sources online, including many baby name websites, identify Azriel as Judaism’s angel of death, this isn’t actually the case. It’s not in the Torah, and when the concept of an angel of death shows up in the Talmud, it’s referred to as malakh ha-mavet — literally, “angel of death.” Islamic law texts have used the name Azrael (not quite the same as Azriel!) to refer to the angel of death within that religion. Online, the two names tend to be treated as one.
How popular is the name?
According to the Social Security Administration, Azriel was not in the top 1000 baby names in the U.S. until 2021, when it entered the list at 924. Since then, it’s shot up in popularity to number 529.
Are parents drawn to the religious meaning? Probably not. Are they influenced by the 1996 Anne Rice novel “Servant of the Bones,” about a Jewish merchant turned genie named Azriel? You’re getting closer, but not quite. Our theory: Azriel is the name of a character in Sarah J. Maas’s mega-popular romantasy series “A Court of Thorns and Roses,” known to fans as ACOTAR.
Who is the “A Court of Thorns and Roses” character Azriel?
My beat is baby names, not romantasy, so forgive me for my best attempt at a summary of the absolute basics of ACOTAR. A human girl gets caught up in a supernatural fae world (think magical fairies) and becomes romantically entwined with several powerful fae leaders. Azriel is introduced in book two, 2016’s “A Court of Mist and Fury,” as part of one of those powerful leader’s inner circle.
According to ACOTAR’s fandom.com wiki, Azriel had a traumatic and abusive childhood, but persevered to become a respected “spymaster shadowsinger,” which sounds impressive, but correct me if I’m wrong. He’s classically beautiful with bat-like wings and an “extremely powerful and muscular” body. A friend who has read the series explained him to me as “the artsy emo shadow daddy.” When I asked her why people would be drawn to name their babies after him, she speculated that it might be because he hasn’t been overtly sexualized (yet).
Why else might Azriel be trending?
There are two baby-naming trends breaking through that help contextualize the spike in baby Azriels. First of all, romantasy-inspired names in general are on the rise. (“Parents are actively seeking names that remind them of anything but our current environment,” the website Nameberry wrote last year.) The other trend concerns linguistics — specifically the trending sound of the vowel hiatus, meaning “a break in sound between two vowels that occur together without an intervening consonant.” Aside from Azriel, other Jewish baby names to watch with a vowel hiatus are Yael and Noa.
Is there anything Jewish about the character Azriel or “A Court of Thorns and Roses” in general?
Well, the books’ author, Sarah J. Maas, was raised Jewish. In fact, when she visited Israel on a Birthright trip, one of the prayers she left in the Western Wall was to become a published author. Maas, a granddaughter of a Holocaust survivor, sprinkles Hebrew words, biblical allusions and Holocaust imagery in all of her series. Maas has also said she looks at baby naming websites to name her characters, so who’s to say she wasn’t searching Kveller’s baby name bank for a good, strong, Hebrew name for her artsy emo shadow daddy?
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