Abishag
given name · Latin script
Meaning: Her story highlights the political significance of the royal harem in ancient Israelite succession, where claiming a late king's concubine was tantamount to claiming the crown
Recorded as a female name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise
(measured from records)Officially recorded in 2 countries · latest register: Guyana, 2025
Abishag is a female given name written in the Latin script, with more bearers in Nigeria than in any other country.
- GYGuyana1 in 125K(measured from records)
- NGNigeria≈1 in 390Kfew records
- USUnited States≈1 in 21Mfew records
carrying the name, as counted by its national register where one exists and as Mondonomo estimates it elsewhere (marked ≈ and "est." on hover). Countries with no figure are shown too: flat where a national register lists the name without counting it, hatched where only our records hold it. One hue, darker where it is more common; hover a country for its figure.
- Nigeria (inferred from the name graph)
- Record sources
- 33 (measured from records)
- 1 in 125K (inferred from the name graph)
≈600 people, est.
corpus datasets behind its best-documented spelling
strongest: highest-authority source
Guyana
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Meaning & origin
(measured from records)Her story highlights the political significance of the royal harem in ancient Israelite succession, where claiming a late king's concubine was tantamount to claiming the crown.
Cited for this meaning 1
- Biblical Names Compiled Database
Attested in 1 language in the etymology graph.
Where in the world
(measured from records)Abishag counted together with the spellings and other-language forms grouped with it. Where a register counted another spelling, the row names it.
Sorted by bearers: national registers' counts, and Mondonomo's estimates (≈, est.) where no register counts.
| Country | Most common spelling | Sources | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| NG Nigeria | ≈600 est. | ≈1 in 390K | — | Abishag | 11 |
| KE Kenya | ≈330 est. | ≈1 in 171K | — | Abishag | 9 |
| GH Ghana | ≈42 est. | ≈1 in 828K | — | Abishag | 3 |
| IN India | ≈35 est. | ≈1 in 42M | listed | Abishag | 4 |
| US United States | ≈16 est. | ≈1 in 21M | — | Abishag | 33 |
| PH Philippines | ≈9 est. | ≈1 in 13M | — | Abishag | 6 |
| GY Guyana | 6 | 1 in 125K | 6 | Abishag | 1 |
Exact figures are national registers' own counts, while figures marked ≈ and est. are Mondonomo’s estimates, counted from our sources and calibrated against those registers; hover one for how far to trust it in that country. A dash means neither exists.
Registers cited: Guyana — Official List of Electors July 2025; the in-kaggle-names-gender register. Figures without a register are Mondonomo estimates; see Methodology.
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)Abishag is also recorded in 5 other lexicons, as a different name or as an ordinary word. These are senses of the spelling, not of the name above.
A rare biblical name, occasionally used in modern Hebrew contexts.
as a nameBiblical Names Compiled Database
In English, The illegitimate child of an unmarried woman and a married man.
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
My father wanders or Father of error
as a nameBiblical Names Compiled Database
In English, Biblical name
as a namePronouncing Dictionary of Proper Names
Biblical: name (possibly meaning ‘wise, educated’ in Hebrew) borne by a beautiful Shunammite virgin who was brought to the dying King David in a vain attempt to restore him to health and vigour. She was later used by David's son and successor Solomon as a reason for executing his half-brother and rival Adonijah (I Kings 1–2): Adonijah had wanted to marry Abishag. Variant: Jewish: Avishag .
as a word
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.
Evidence
(measured from records)2 registers and reference works attest this spelling, across 2 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| GY Guyana | Guyana — Official List of Electors July 2025 | 2025 | 6 | #588 |
| IN India | Indian names with gender (Kaggle) | — | — | — |
Register rows as of the 2026-10-09 data build.
Frequently asked questions
- What does the name Abishag mean, and where does it come from?
- Her story highlights the political significance of the royal harem in ancient Israelite succession, where claiming a late king's concubine was tantamount to claiming the crown. Recorded by Biblical Names Compiled Database.
- What are other forms of the name Abishag?
- In the etymology graph, Avishag is a form of the same name in other languages.
- Is Abishag a male or female name?
- Abishag 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 Abishag have the most bearers?
- Mondonomo estimates about 597 people named Abishag in Nigeria, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled abishag.
- Where is Abishag most common?
- Measured as a share of residents rather than as a count, Abishag is densest in Guyana — about 1 in 125 thousand people — even though Nigeria holds more of our records for it.
- How common is the name Abishag?
- In Guyana, the national register counted 6 people named Abishag in 2025, about 1 in 125 thousand residents.
What do you want to know about Abishag?
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/abishagThe 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, “Abishag”. Data snapshot 2026-10-13.