Fun Facts About the Name Abigeal
- 22 babies named Abigeal: U.S. records list 22 babies given the name Abigeal from 1880 through 2025.
What Does the Name Abigeal Mean?
Abigeal is a respelled variant of Abigail, a name taken from the Hebrew Bible. The parent name is Hebrew אֲבִיגַיִל ('Avigayil), built from two elements: אָב ('av, "father") and גִּיל (gil, "joy, rejoicing"). Read literally, it means "my father is joy" or "my father rejoices." The familiar English gloss "father's joy" or "a source of joy" is a customary interpretation rather than a word-for-word translation. The spelling Abigeal keeps the same name but writes the second element as -geal; this is one of several English respellings, alongside Abigael and Abigayle, and it does not point to a different root or a different language of origin.
Abigeal Name History & Origins
The name Abigail appears twice in the Hebrew Bible. In 1 Samuel 25, Abigail is the shrewd and generous wife of Nabal of Carmel; she intervenes to stop David from taking revenge, and after Nabal's death she becomes David's wife. A second Abigail, mother of Amasa, is named in 2 Samuel 17:25. From these biblical figures the name passed into Jewish use and then into Christian Europe through translations of the Bible.
In England and its American colonies, Abigail was common among Protestants in the 17th century, when biblical names were widely favored. It also entered ordinary English as a common noun: after the maid character Abigail in Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher's play The Scornful Lady (1616), "an abigail" was used to mean a lady's waiting woman. The name's short forms - Abby, Abbie, and Gail - grew out of this longer history.
The form Abigeal is a later respelling of the same name rather than a distinct tradition. It circulates mainly in modern English-speaking use, and its -geal ending reflects the wide variation in how the name's unstressed final syllable is written. It has no separate etymology of its own.
How Popular is the Name Abigeal?
Abigeal has historically been an exceptionally rare given name in the United States, remaining well outside the national mainstream. It saw its highest recorded annual births in 2013. Its best rank was #13,164 in 2013.
U.S. name popularity from 1880-2025, based on SSA data. Rank shows how the name compares with other names - lower numbers mean greater popularity. Births shows how many babies received the name each year.
| Year | Rank | Births | % |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2013 | #13,164 | 7 | 0.0004% |
| 2007 | #17,654 | 5 | 0.0003% |
| 2003 | #15,800 | 5 | 0.0003% |
| 2002 | #15,454 | 5 | 0.0003% |
Name popularity over more than a century, based on Social Security Administration data. Gaps in the chart indicate years when the name does not appear in the published records.
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How the Name Abigeal Shapes Your Personality and Life?
Powerful and complete. You are good intellectually and require several outlets for your energies. You are not a builder but a planner, and you want others to carry out your plans. You are bold, independent, inquisitive and interested in research. You know what you want and why you want it.
You are always looking for a chance to do your own thing, to be your own person, and to have things done your own way.
✦ Abigeal's Deeper Meaning & Tips for Parents Discover Abigeal's symbolic numbers and practical tips for choosing a name that complements your child's birth date.