The ( 'translations of Hebrew names', ) are lexicons that give translations of the proper names of the Hebrew Bible into Latin. They were widely used study aids in the Latin Church during the Middle Ages and were often copied alongside the biblical text.
The original was the of Jerome (died 420). This was arranged by biblical book and alphabetically within each book. This led sometimes to doubling of entries. Jerome drew on the work of Philo and the Onomasticon of Eusebius, but whereas Eusebius listed mainly place names, Jerome's lists was mostly personal names. He also included references to his own Hebrew Questions on Genesis. The headwords are in Hebrew (or occasionally Aramaic) transliterated into Latin followed by a definition ranging in length from a single word to a short paragraph.
Most later lexicons are derived from Jerome's , although a few are new creations, such as that in the British Library manuscript Royal MS 2 F IV, which was created from the Etymologies of Isidore. Later lexicons are usually organized alphabetically without division. Some later ones were enhanced with a better knowledge of Hebrew. In the 12th century, Ralph Niger titled his work Philippicus in honour of the Jew who helped him with it. Most , however, are conventionally known by their initial lemmata:
and the meanings they provided were especially popular among monastic exegetes doing tropological readings. After about 1230, they were the norm in single-volume bibles and survive in hundreds of manuscripts.