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Etymology •
& Meaning •
Hebrew •
Greek •
Bible •
Names •
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Meaning and etymology of the Hebrew name Abijah
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Abijah 
Some translations make a distinction between the names Abiah and Abijah, but in the Hebrew no such distinction exists.
In the Bible, the name Abijah is assigned to two women and six men. The women named Abijah are: (1) one of the wives of Hezron and the mother of Asshur (1 Chronicles 2:24) and (2) the mother of King Hezekiah and wife of king Ahaz of Judah (2 Chronicles 29:1 - in the parallel text of 2 Kings 18:2 she is called Abi).
The men named Abijah are:
(1) The youngest son of Samuel, who worked as a judge in Beesrheba. He and his brother Joel are openly corrupt. This causes Israel's elders to stand up and demand a king (1 Samuel 8:2);
(2) The son of king Jeroboam. This Abijah is the first of the family of Jeroboam to die, as God sweeps them away "like one would sweep away dung" (1 Kings 14:1-18).
(3) a son of Becher, who was a son of Benjamin (1 Chronicles 7:8);
(4) The head of the eighth division of the sons of Aaron. Zacharias, the father of John the Baptist, is a member of that division (1 Chronicles 24:10; Luke 1:5);
(5) King Abijah of Judah, also known as Abijam. When king Jeroboam of Israel attacks Judah, the army of king Abijah slays 500,000 Israeli soldiers. In those days, that's enough to bankrupt a nation, as Abijah probably understood, as he married fourteen wives and fathered twenty-two sons and sixteen daughters (2 Chronicles 13:1-20).
(6) A signer of the national constitution of Ezra's new Judah (Nehemiah 10:7), who is probably the same Abijah mentioned among the returnees together with Zerubbabel, Ezra and Nehemiah (Nehemiah 12:4 and 17).
The name Abijah consists of two parts:
The central yod may be considered a remnant of the possessive yod of the compound  meaning my father (see the name Abi). If so, then it overlaps with the yod of the appellative
 , Jah, which in turn is an abbreviated form of the Tetragrammaton; the name of the Lord: YHWH.
Thus the whole name may mean The Lord Is My Father.
BDB Theological Dictionary allows the yod to be possessive, and reads Yah Is (My) Father. Jones' Dictionary of Old Testament Proper Names doesn't, and reads Father Of The Lord (which is theologically only possible is the father denotes a figure of authority, who's been placed in office by the Lord - a rather inelegant translation). NOBS Study Bible Name List reads Yahweh Is Father.
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