Delilah hit No. 50 in 2024, an all-time high, which is interesting because the biblical Delilah is a villain. She is the woman in Judges 16 who cuts Samson's hair, robs him of his strength, and hands him over to the Philistines. American parents have decided this is fine. The story of how that decision happened is more interesting than most.
Hebrew root, contested meaning
Delilah comes from the Hebrew Delilah (דְּלִילָה), and the etymology is contested. The traditional reading links it to a root meaning weakened or feeble, which lines up neatly with the Samson story but feels like an after-the-fact interpretation. An alternative reading connects the name to a root meaning delicate or one with long hair, which is more semantically positive and may be the older sense.
Either way, the biblical character is the dominant cultural reference, and her narrative is unambiguously antagonistic. Yet the name has been used in English-speaking countries since at least the seventeenth century. Puritan-era Delilahs appear in colonial American records; the name has never disappeared, even when it has been rare.
The Tom Jones effect and the modern revival
Tom Jones released Delilah in 1968, and it became one of the most recognisable songs of late-1960s pop. The song is, on examination, a darker piece than its sing-along chorus suggests — it tells the story of a man who kills his unfaithful lover named Delilah — but the chorus is what stuck in cultural memory, and the name became associated more with the catchy melody than with either the song's plot or the biblical original.
The modern American revival of Delilah began in the early 2000s, accelerated through the 2010s, and arrived at the No. 50 peak in 2024. Several pressures converge: parents reaching for biblical names that are not the obvious top picks (Hannah, Sarah, Rebecca), parents drawn to the longer multi-syllable register (de-LIE-lah, three syllables, soft consonants), and a broader rehabilitation of biblical women whose stories were morally complicated.
Counter-reading: the villainy question
Some readings of the Samson and Delilah story have shifted in recent decades, with feminist biblical scholarship reframing Delilah as a Philistine woman acting in the interests of her own people during a time of war. Other readings simply hold that biblical naming has never required full character endorsement — many Christian families use Jacob despite his deceiving Isaac, or David despite Bathsheba.
For most parents picking Delilah today, the song is the reference point and the biblical character is a distant second. That is not necessarily disrespectful; it is how cultural reference works once a name has been in continuous use for several centuries.
For sibling pairs, Delilah works well with other multi-syllable biblical girls' names: Delilah and Naomi, Delilah and Leah, Delilah and Eden. Middle-name choices benefit from the contrast of shorter classics: Delilah Rose, Delilah Grace, Delilah Mae. The full biblical girls' names category remains active.