Absalom

Absalom is a masculine first name from the Old Testament, where Absalom is a son of King David. The variant is used as the name of the father-in-law of Rehoboam in 1 Kings (15:2,10), who in 2 Chronicles 11:20,21 is referred to by the shorter form Avshalom. The modern Scandinavian first name, Axel has developed (via Axelen) from Absalon, a 12th-century Danish archbishop and statesman. The variant Absolon is a German surname. The name was also used in medieval England (variants Absolon, Apsolon, Abselon). As in the biblical story, as Absalom was pursuing his father, King David, in the forest of Ephraim and has his long hair caught in a tree, the name appears to have been a nickname for a man with long or thick hair, as suggested by a passage in the Canterbury Tales, This use as a nickname is possibly also the origin of Absalom as an English surname. The name Absalom continued to be used in Anglo-Saxon Protestantism in the 18th and 19th centuries.