Peninnah
given name · Latin script
Meaning: A Hebrew name meaning 'pearl' or 'jewel'; though biblical, it is historically less common than Hannah due to the character's antagonistic role in scripture
Recorded as a female name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise
/pɛninnah/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated
Peninnah is a given name written in the Latin script, most frequently recorded in Kenya.
- KEKenya
- NGNigeria
- GBUnited Kingdom
Where the name is found, darker where our sources hold more of it. No national register counts its bearers anywhere we hold data, so the map carries no figures. One hue, darker where it is more common; hover a country for its figure.
Meaning & origin(measured from records)
A Hebrew name meaning 'pearl' or 'jewel'; though biblical, it is historically less common than Hannah due to the character's antagonistic role in scripture.
Sources 1
- Biblical Names Compiled Database
Attested across 2 languages in the etymology graph.
Where in the world(measured from records)
Recorded in:
No national register we accept counts this name’s bearers, so the page lists where it is found and publishes no figure.
Country figures for a list of names, at full precision, are available under licence rather than by scraping this table (how that works).
Other recorded senses(measured from records)
Peninnah is also recorded in 4 other lexicons, as a different name or as an ordinary word. These are senses of the spelling, not of the name above.
She serves as a literary foil to Hannah, representing the source of domestic strife and the antagonist who, through provocation, inadvertently drives Hannah to the fervent prayer that results in the birth of Samuel.
as a nameBiblical Names Compiled Database
Jewish traditional name, meaning ‘coral’ in Hebrew. It was borne in the Bible by the co-wife (with Hannah) of Elkanah, the father of Samuel. In modern Hebrew it means ‘pearl’ and has become a popular name, often being substituted for Yiddish Perle and English pPearl. Variants: Peninna, Penina.
as a nameA concise dictionary of first names
Pearl, coral, or jewel
as a nameBiblical Names Compiled Database
In English, Biblical name
as a namePronouncing Dictionary of Proper Names
Ordered by how much of this spelling's record each language holds, so a sense from a language the name is barely used in sits last rather than first.
Notable people with this name(measured from records)
- Peninnah Kabengeb. 1964UGUgandan sports personality
The ten people covered by the most Wikipedia language editions — a proxy for cross-cultural notability, which favours historical and Western figures over equally prominent contemporary ones — shown by birth year. Source: Wikidata (CC0).
How to address them(machine-generated)
A formal English salutation is built on the surname, so it needs a full name — on its own, a first name only supports the informal form.
Evidence(measured from records)
Attested in 5 sources across 4 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| GY Guyana | Guyana — Official List of Electors July 2025 | 2025 | 3 | #591 |
| UG Uganda | Wikidata humans by citizenship — given & family names | — | 1 | #882 |
| GB United Kingdom | A Concise Dictionary of First Names (Hanks & Hodges, 2001) | — | — | — |
| NL Netherlands | Babynamen — Lijst met meer dan 22.000 namen (Amelia King, 2020) | — | — | — |
Reference works 1
- Wikidata name items (native-script + romanized given/family names)
These works list the name; their figures are licensed and are not reproduced here.
Register rows as of the 2026-10-09 data build.
Frequently asked questions
- What does the name Peninnah mean, and where does it come from?
- A Hebrew name meaning 'pearl' or 'jewel'; though biblical, it is historically less common than Hannah due to the character's antagonistic role in scripture. Recorded by Biblical Names Compiled Database.
- What are other forms of the name Peninnah?
- In the etymology graph, Pnina and Peninna are forms of the same name in other languages.
- How do you pronounce Peninnah?
- A machine transcription gives /pɛninnah/ (IPA) for Swahili.
- Is Peninnah a male or female name?
- Peninnah is a female name in our records. Opposite-gender entries fall within the cross-gender noise we measure in the source data, so we don't report them as usage.
- In which country does Peninnah have the most bearers?
- Peninnah is most frequently recorded in Kenya.
What do you want to know about Peninnah?
Nobody replies to these one by one, but what readers ask decides what these pages answer next.
Query this name via API
curl -H "X-API-Key: YOUR_KEY" https://api.mondonomo.ai/api/v1/name-graph/peninnahThe payload this page is built from: spellings and scripts, countries and languages, related names, and the registers that attest the form. It takes a free API key (1,000 requests a day), which returns what this page shows everyone; the full country table, every register citation and the year-by-year series come with a licensed key, as does bulk access.
About this data
measured from records inferred from the name graph machine-generated
These figures come from the data snapshot of and will change as it is rebuilt.
Statistics are aggregated from the Mondonomo name corpus; related names and etymology are inferred from the name graph; pronunciation and any machine-marked transliterations are model-generated. Read how the numbers are made, including their known failure modes, and where the data comes from.
Reference works we consult — surname dictionaries, official name registers, Wikidata and Wiktionary — are named directly, beside the claims they support. The per-country source counts also include datasets of person records: we publish how many there are and their authority tier, but not their names.
Cite this page Mondonomo, “Peninnah”. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.