Nathanael

Nathanael is the older and more formal form of Nathaniel, from the Hebrew Netan'el — God has given. In the Gospel of John, Nathanael is one of Jesus's first disciples, called from under a fig tree with the famous greeting "Here is an Israelite in whom there is no deceit." The four-syllable version has a slightly more classical and ecclesiastical air than its streamlined cousin, the extra vowel giving it a baroque cadence. It stayed in use among Puritan families in the seventeenth century and has quietly revived in recent decades. Nathanael feels biblical and scholarly at once, a name with stained-glass light in it.