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Etymology •
& Meaning •
Hebrew •
Greek •
Bible •
Names •
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Meaning and etymology of the name Eve
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Eve 
Eve is the wife of Adam; traditionally the first human female, but that tradition is presently under attack. See for more info the Chaotic Set Theory. Legends that are much younger than the sources of our book Genesis report of a predecessor of Eve, named Lilith. See our article on the name Lilith for a rebuttal.
Most (if not all) translators and interpreters derive the name Eve from the verb  (haya), meaning live or have life. In Genesis 3:20 it reads that Eve was named this way because she was  ; mother of all life. The Hebrew word  ('em), mother, comes from the same root as  ('amma), mother city, cubit, tribe/ people; hence the phrases Mother Babylon and Mother Jerusalem. The phrase 'all life' returns six times in Scriptures and never just mankind is meant (show me). Hence the 'mother of all life' is the biosphere; all living things.
And hence the NOBS Study Bible Name List, Jones' Dictionary of Old Testament Proper Names, and even BDB Theological Dictionary report in dubious unison that the name Eve means Life.
But note the difference between the verb that means to live and the name Eve: and . The verb is spelled with a yod but the name is spelled with a waw. These two letter sometimes interchange - and mostly when they're both vowels, which they both aren't in this case - but this verb, and all its many derivations are always spelled with a yod.
So yes, Eve is the mother of all life, but her name simply doesn't mean life.
It's a leap of critical neglect to assume, that when parents call their baby Bob, and say, "because that was the name of our dog," they are doing this because they mean to propone that the name Bob means dog.
The name is identical to the Hebrew root group (hwh I, II & III):
• The root (hwh) is unused in the Bible, so we don't exactly know what it means. But BDB Theological Dictionary reports of a identical verb in Arabic that means to collect or gather. The derivative (hawwa), meaning tent or village (Deuteronomy 3:14, Joshua 13:30) is identical to the name Eve.
• The verb (hawa II) meaning to show, tell, make known. This Hebrew verb occurs six times in the Bible (mostly in Job: Job 15:17, 32:6) but the Aramaic equivalent occurs fourteen times in Daniel (3:32, 5:7). Its obvious derivative  (ahwah), meaning declaration, occurs once, in Job 13:17.
• The verb (hawa III) meaning to prostrate oneself, specifically out of sheer politeness (Genesis 18:2, 23:7), in submission to a superior (Exodus 11:8, Esther 3:2) or in worship of God (Judges 7:15, 1 Chronicles 29:20).
Eve does not mean 'the girl of the two,' and is also not the model for all wives (Keil and Delitzsch' Commentary on the Old Testament) bound to goof up. Man and woman are both under label Adam, and their drive to group up lodge in Eve. The name Eve denotes the collectivity that is so common to the behavior of living things. We should never forget that multicellular creatures, even humans, are in fact a highly efficient colony of single cellular creatures.
The name Eve means Gathering, Declaration or Humility, because she was the mother of all of life.
For names that do come from the verb haya, see Hiel,
Jehiah and
Jehiel.
The name Eve is also strikingly similar to the name Hivite.
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