God Changed Their Names | Bible Trivia Quiz | Digging Deeper

Question 1. God changed Abram’s name to Abraham. What does the new name mean, and where is the change recorded?

Answer: Genesis 17:5. “Abraham” means “father of many nations.”

Context & Exhortation: At the moment God renames him, Abraham is ninety-nine years old and still childless. “Neither shall thy name any more be called Abram, but thy name shall be Abraham; for a father of many nations have I made thee” (Genesis 17:5) — notice the tense. Not “will make,” but “have made,” as though it were already accomplished, spoken over a man with no visible evidence to support it. 

From that point forward, every single person who spoke to Abraham had to call him by a name that was, on its face, a lie — an old childless man being addressed as “father of multitudes” every single day. 

That’s uncomfortable, and it’s meant to be. God attached a promise to Abraham’s identity before the promise had a shred of physical proof, and required Abraham to live inside that tension for years before Isaac was ever born. 

See, sometimes God does the same to us. He calls us by who we are becoming before the evidence has caught up. He calls the anxious person “at peace,” the empty-handed person “provided for,” the struggling person “more than a conqueror.” Hallelujah.

It can feel almost dishonest to accept a name like that when our circumstances say otherwise. Abraham’s whole life argues that it isn’t dishonest; it’s prophetic. 

Today, Family, let us allow God’s word about us to speak louder than our current evidence, the way it did for Abraham.

Question 2. Jacob’s name was changed after he wrestled with a divine visitor. What was his new name, and where does this happen?

Answer: Israel, in Genesis 32:24–28, meaning roughly “he struggles with God” or “God prevails.”

Context & Exhortation: This wrestling match happens at night, alone, at a brook called Jabbok, on the eve of Jacob’s terrifying reunion with the brother he had cheated decades earlier. 

A man wrestles with him until daybreak, wrenches his hip out of joint, and still Jacob will not let go. He said in Gen 32:26: “I will not let thee go, except thou bless me”. The response is the name change: “Thy name shall be called no more Jacob, but Israel: for as a prince hast thou power with God and with men, and hast prevailed” (32:28). 

The name “Jacob” itself meant “supplanter” or “heel-grabber” — a name he had earned by grabbing his twin’s heel at birth and later grabbing his birthright and blessing by deception. His whole identity, up to this point, had been built on scheming his way to what he wanted. 

Israel walks away from that river with a limp he will carry for the rest of his life. He also ended up with a new name that no longer describes a con man, but a man who wrestled honestly with God and refused to quit until he was blessed. 

Sometimes, Family, the encounter that finally changes our character is not a comfortable one. It may leave a limp. But a limp earned in honest wrestling with God is worth infinitely more than an untested life built on old schemes.

Question 3. Simon was given a new name by Jesus. What was it, and what does it mean?

Answer: Peter, from the Greek “Petros,” meaning “rock” — recorded in John 1:42 (and see Matthew 16:18).

Context & Exhortation: “Thou art Simon the son of Jona: thou shalt be called Cephas, which is by interpretation, A stone” (John 1:42). 

Cephas is the Aramaic form; Peter, or Petros, is the Greek equivalent. Both essentially mean “rock.” And what’s striking is when Jesus says this: at their very first meeting, before Simon has done a single thing to earn it. 

This is not a nickname given after years of proven steadiness. This is the same Simon Peter who will later sink while walking on water out of fear (Matthew 14:30), the same man who will rebuke Jesus for predicting His own death (Matthew 16:22), and the same Simon Peter who will deny even knowing Jesus three times on the night of the crucifixion (Luke 22:54–62). 

By any honest accounting of his early behavior, “Rock” looks like an ironic nickname for one of the most impulsive, unstable men in the Gospels. And yet by Acts 2, this same Peter stands up in front of thousands in Jerusalem and preaches the sermon that births the church - steady, bold, immovable. 

Jesus named him for who he would become, not who he currently was. That is worth remembering the next time anyone of us feels like our instability disqualifies us from being useful to God. 

Family, God is not naming us after our worst moment. And I don’t know about you, but I thank God for that! I choose to believe that Jesus is already calling us by the name of who we’re going to be.

Question 4. Saul of Tarsus is later called by a different name. What is it, and where does the change first appear?

Answer: Paul — the switch first appears in Acts 13:9, “Then Saul, (who also is called Paul).”

Context & Exhortation: Unlike Abraham, Jacob, or Peter, there’s no dramatic renaming ceremony here. Luke simply mentions the change almost in passing, in the middle of a missionary journey, at the exact moment Saul begins ministering primarily to Gentiles. 

“Saul” is a Hebrew name, notably the name of Israel’s first king, a fellow tribesman of Benjamin, as Paul himself was (Romans 11:1). “Paul” (Paulus) is a Roman name, and it starts being used precisely as his mission shifts toward the Gentile, Greek-and-Roman-speaking world. 

Many scholars believe this wasn’t a supernatural renaming so much as Paul simply going by the name that would resonate with his new audience — a Jewish rabbi becoming, in name as well as mission, accessible to the nations he’d been sent to reach. 

There’s a quiet lesson in how understated this transition is compared to the others. Not every calling from God arrives with fireworks and a divine encounter at a riverbank. Sometimes it looks like Luke’s plain sentence: he was called one thing, and now, because his mission had changed, he goes by another. 

Faithfulness to a new calling doesn’t always require a dramatic moment. Sometimes it just requires showing up differently for the people you’re now sent to reach. But I dare to add, if you are not fulfilling your calling, be careful. Comfort can quietly become the thing you settled for instead. Someone is still waiting on the other side of your obedience.

Question 5. Daniel’s three friends were given Babylonian names. What were their original Hebrew names? (Give both names for the 3 friends ONLY)

Answer: Hananiah, Mishael, and Azariah — renamed Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego in Daniel 1:6–7.

Context & Exhortation: All three of the original Hebrew names contained a piece of God’s name embedded in them. Did you know that? I didn’t.

Hananiah (“the LORD is gracious”), Mishael (“who is what God is”), Azariah (“the LORD has helped”). 

On the other hand, all three of the Babylonian replacement names honored Babylonian deities instead — Shadrach likely referencing the moon god, Meshach likely a mocking reference to a Babylonian deity, Abednego meaning “servant of Nebo,” a Babylonian god. 

This was not incidental. It was a deliberate strategy. The same one used on Daniel himself to strip young Jewish captives of every marker of their God-given identity and replace it with the empire’s own branding, right down to their names (Daniel 1:6–7). 

And it is worth sitting with the fact that these three men never once, anywhere in the text, insist on being called by their old names. They let Babylon call them whatever it wanted. What they refused to compromise was not their label but their loyalty — they would not bow to the golden image, whatever name was stitched onto them (Daniel 3:12–18). 

That’s an important distinction for us. Sometimes the pressure to conform to a hostile culture isn’t really about names, titles, or outward labels at all. Those may not be worth fighting over. What matters is holding the line on where you will actually bow. Know which battles are about identity and which are about idolatry, and fight the right one.

Question 6. What was Daniel’s own Babylonian name? (And where is it found?)

Answer: Belteshazzar, given in Daniel 1:7.

Context & Exhortation: As we discussed before with his three friends, this name also likely honored the Babylonian god Bel (also known as Marduk). This was a deliberate irony considering Daniel would go on to become the one man in the empire who could interpret dreams and read handwriting on walls that every one of Babylon’s actual priests of Bel could not (see Daniel 2 and Daniel 5). 

Note also the confusion this can cause in casual Bible reading: there is another figure named Belshazzar in Daniel 5 — the king at the infamous feast where the mysterious hand writes on the wall — and his name is easy to mix up with Daniel’s Babylonian alias, 

Belteshazzar.  Belshazzar. Notice the difference? They are two entirely different people; just two letters separate a Judean exile from a reigning Babylonian king. It’s a small detail, but it’s a good discipline for us: careful reading matters, especially with unfamiliar ancient names that look nearly identical on the page. 

Beyond the trivia, though, there’s something worth noting. Daniel carried a pagan name — attached to a pagan god — for the rest of his recorded life in Scripture. And yet he remained unmistakably faithful to the true God in every decision the text records: refusing the king’s food, and praying toward Jerusalem three times a day even under threat of death (Daniel 6:10).

What’s our takeaway from this? Our circumstances, our title, even the name stamped on us by a hostile system, do not have to define our loyalty. Daniel proved that a man can carry Babylon’s name and still belong entirely to God. Very interesting! We have to know who we are in Christ, no matter what the world says about us!

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