The Mystery of David's Name

 For years now I've been acutely aware that though King David is a very impressive and inspiring person, the meaning of his name still eludes me.

So far, I've gathered a few options, but none of these are perfect.

• David is a short-form of Dodyahu.

This is suggested by Da'at Mikra. A side problem with this is the question of why David's parents would prefer a short-form and not the full name. But I suppose that could be rectified if one would understand the name-choices of that era. A bigger problem would be that the letter Vav in David is a root-letter, making that actual Vah sound, rather than being a vowel letter, that are there simply to make the Oh or Oo sound, such as in Dodyahu.

There are a few other such names in Tanach. The two that come to mind at the moment are Vafsi and Hodvayahu. Like David, I'm not entirely sure what their names mean. Hodvayahu is a bit easier, being clearly a mashup of Hod and Hashem's name. But the Vav in the middle is a mystery. Vafsi, like David, is entirely unclear.

• David is a secularized Hoveh or Havayah.

A few months ago I speculated that David may simply be the word הוה or הויה with the Heh letters replaced with Dalet letters, much like some people nowadays write ה' with a ד', to steer clear as much as possible from writing Hashem's name with any of the letters of the Name. The idea here being that this way, David retains a connection to Hashem through his name.

The problem with this is that David in ktiv chaser (without the letter Yod) forms that word Hoveh while in ktiv maleh (with the Yod) forms Havayah. Similar words, but still two different words. Furthermore, we have no evidence that Tanachic era people would switch the letters of Hashem's Name. And finally, were David a secularized Hoveh or Havayah, his name should have been pronounced Davad or Davayad.

• David isn't King David's real name but is a later misinterpretation of the king's ancient title, "Davidum", turned into a personal name.

This has been suggest by Werner Keller, amongst others (for example). In the archives of the ancient city of Mari, a tablet was found discussing an ongoing war with a group called the "Benjaminites", led by the "davidum". While the tablet is currently dated to centuries prior David's time, some believe that there's some timey-whimey anachronistic stuff going on and that this davidum leader of the Benjaminites is really King David, except his name isn't really David - that's merely a later mutation of his title of "davidum" which apparently means "leader" in some sort of ancient Mesopotamian language. This means that David is derived from an ancient word that was synonymous with leader.

The main problem with this is the anachronism. This tablet is dated to about 1000 years prior to David's era. Furthermore, David wasn't just king of Binyamin, he was king of all of Israel. It is unclear who these Benjaminites were and who this davidum was, but I'm pretty sure that Am Yisrael they were not*. Other problems include: 

a. Even if davidum is the origin of David, we still don't know what the word actually means, at its core.

b. Keller wrote this down before the discovery of the Tel Dan Stele fragment with the phrase "Beit David", "House of David" on it. While believed to have been written centuries after David's time, one would have to ask: if davidum is the origin of "David", when did the word mutation happen and when did the descendants of davidum start calling themselves the descendants of David? It doesn't really add up.

c. Finally, we believe in the Torah. It's pretty darn clear that the Tanach, Gemara and all other sources use "David" as a personal name. With all due respect to Keller's modernized, minimalistic Christianity, it's not a valid understanding in Judaism.

Going back to the other Vav-root names, I believe that understanding the role of the Vav in those names may be the key to unlocking the meaning of David's name.

*Damien Mackey, interestingly enough, suggests to the contrary. In his essay Hammurabi and Zimri-Lim as Contemporaries of Solomon, he suggests, based on some evidence, that davidum of the Benjaminites is in fact King David and that the conventional chronological placements of figures such as Zimri-Lim of Mari and even Hammurabi is wrong and that they should be dated to circa David and Shlomo's time. What we're left with, though, is that "David" is not a later Hebraic misinterpretation of the title "davidum" but that "davidum" is a foreign misinterpretation of the name "David". And so, the mystery remains.