Gad (name)

In the Bible, Gad was the son of Jacob and the founder of the tribe of Gad. Gad is a surname, masculine given name and nickname which may refer to:

Given name

Gad (deity)

Gad was the name of the pan-Semitic god of fortune, and is attested in ancient records of Aram and Arabia. Gad is also mentioned by the Book of Isaiah (Isaiah 65:11 - some translations simply call him (the god of) Fortune), as having been worshipped by a number of Hebrews during the babylonian captivity. Gad apparently differed from the god of destiny, who was known as Meni. The root verb in Gad means cut or divide, and from this comes the idea of fate being meted out.

It is possible that the son of Jacob named Gad is named after Gad, although the text presents a different reason, the (ketub) quotation of Zilpa (Gad's mother) giving the reason of Gad's name could be understood that way.

How widespread the cult of Gad, the deity, was in Canaanite times may be inferred from the names Baalgad, a city at the foot of Mount Hermon, and Migdal-gad, in the territory of Judah. Compare also the proper names Gaddi and Gaddiel in the tribes of Manasseh and Zebulun (Numbers 13:10, 11). At the same time it must not be supposed that Gad was always regarded as an independent deity. The name was doubtless originally an appellative, meaning the power that allots. Hence any of the greater gods supposed to favour men might be thought of as the giver of good fortune and be worshiped under that title; it is possible that Jupiter, the planet, may have been the Gad thus honoured - among the Arabs the planet Jupiter was called the greater Fortune (Venus was styled the lesser Fortune).

Gad (prophet)

Gad was a seer or prophet in the Hebrew Bible. He was one of the personal prophets of King David of Israel and some of his writings are believed to be included in the Books of Samuel. He is first mentioned in 1 Samuel 22:5 telling David to return to the land of Judah.

The most important Biblical reference to Gad is 2 Samuel 24:11-13, where after David confesses his sin of taking a census of the people of Israel and Judah, God sends Gad to David to offer him his choice of three forms of punishment.

Gad is mentioned a last time in the Books of Samuel in 2 Samuel 24:18, coming to David and telling him to build an altar to God after He stops the plague that David chose.

1 Chronicles 21:18 tells of an encounter Gad had with the angel of the Lord.

A tomb attributed to Gad is located at Halhul, West Bank.

The Chronicles of Gad the seer

The words, or chronicle, of Gad the seer are mentioned in 1 Chronicles 29:29 and are generally considered a lost text.

Notes

Gad (restaurant)

Gad is a fast food chain that is based in Egypt. Gad specializes in preparing local favorites that are meant to be eaten on the go; few of their outlets have seating. Gad serves falafel, fuul, and shwarmas.

Gad has branches all over Egypt.

External links

.name

The domain name "name" is a generic top-level domain (gTLD) in the Domain Name System of the Internet. It is intended for use by individuals for representation of their personal name, nicknames, screen names, pseudonyms, or other types of identification labels.

The top-level domain was founded by Hakon Haugnes and Geir Rasmussen and initially delegated to Global Name Registry in 2001, and become fully operational in January 2002. Verisign was the outsourced operator for .name since the .name launch in 2002 and acquired Global Name Registry in 2008.

On the .name TLD, domains may be registered on the second level (john.name) and the third level (john.doe.name). It is also possible to register an e-mail address of the form [email protected]. Such an e-mail address may have to be a forwarding account and require another e-mail address as the recipient address, or may be treated as a conventional email address (such as [email protected]), depending on the registrar.

When a domain is registered on the third level (john.doe.name), the second level (doe.name in this case) is shared, and may not be registered by any individual. Other second level domains like johndoe.name remain unaffected.

Name

A name is a term used for identification. Names can identify a class or category of things, or a single thing, either uniquely, or within a given context. A personal name identifies, not necessarily uniquely, a specific individual human. The name of a specific entity is sometimes called a proper name (although that term has a philosophical meaning also) and is, when consisting of only one word, a proper noun. Other nouns are sometimes called "common names" or (obsolete) "general names". A name can be given to a person, place, or thing; for example, parents can give their child a name or scientist can give an element a name.

Caution must be exercised when translating, for there are ways that one language may prefer one type of name over another. A feudal naming habit is used sometimes in other languages: the French sometimes refer to Aristotle as "le Stagirite" from one spelling of his place of birth, and English speakers often refer to Shakespeare as "The Bard", recognizing him as a paragon writer of the language. Also, claims to preference or authority can be refuted: the British did not refer to Louis-Napoleon as Napoleon III during his rule.

Identifier

An identifier is a name that identifies (that is, labels the identity of) either a unique object or a unique class of objects, where the "object" or class may be an idea, physical [countable] object (or class thereof), or physical [noncountable] substance (or class thereof). The abbreviation ID often refers to identity, identification (the process of identifying), or an identifier (that is, an instance of identification). An identifier may be a word, number, letter, symbol, or any combination of those.

The words, numbers, letters, or symbols may follow an encoding system (wherein letters, digits, words, or symbols stand for (represent) ideas or longer names) or they may simply be arbitrary. When an identifier follows an encoding system, it is often referred to as a code or ID code. Identifiers that do not follow any encoding scheme are often said to be arbitrary IDs; they are arbitrarily assigned and have no greater meaning. (Sometimes identifiers are called "codes" even when they are actually arbitrary, whether because the speaker believes that they have deeper meaning or simply because he is speaking casually and imprecisely.)