Meaning & Origin
Nathanial is a boy's baby name of Hebrew origin, a variant spelling of Nathaniel, from the Hebrew Netan'el, meaning 'gift of God' — combining natan (to give) and El (God).
Nathaniel was one of the twelve apostles (also called Bartholomew) and the name of author Nathaniel Hawthorne, who gave American literature its dark moral imagination. Nathanial with the 'ia' spelling appears in some early American and British records — a variant that maintains the name's full biblical dignity in a slightly less common written form.