Noemi

Noemi is the Classical Latin and sometimes Biblical form of the name Naomi. Naomi ultimately comes from the Hebrew word meaning “pleasantness”. The name is borne from the Bible; Naomi appears in the Book of Ruth as the wise and kind mother-in-law of Ruth. In the Biblical story Naomi and her family leave their home in Bethlehem during a famine and settle in Moab. Shortly thereafter, Naomi’s husband died and so she was left only with her sons. The two sons each marry Moabite women, Orpah and Ruth, and after about ten years the two sons die, as well. After losing both her sons and her husband, Naomi is dejected and grief-stricken and so decides to return to Bethlehem alone. Orpah and Ruth insist on following their mother-in-law but Naomi instructs them to return to their own people so that the girls may find new husbands. “And Orpah kissed her mother-in-law, but Ruth clung to her.” (Ruth 1:14). In other words, Orpah returned to her parent’s home but Ruth refused to abandon Naomi and so followed her back to Bethlehem. In Bethlehem, Naomi helped to orchestrate the marriage between Ruth and Boaz, a land-owning relative; and to help raise the couple’s son, Obed (thus creating a new foster family for herself). The love and loyalty between Naomi and Ruth in the Bible is a great story about friendship and devotion. Naomi is Hebrew for “pleasantness” while Ruth is Hebrew for “compassion”. Even their etymologies are symbolic of their friendship. Ruth’s baby Obed would later become the grandfather of Israel’s great King David, the same ancestral line belonging to Jesus. So Naomi is a sort of foster-matriarch of this lineage adding to her over all importance from a religious perspective. Noemí with an accent over the “i” is the Spanish and Portuguese form of this “pleasant” name, while the Italians use Noemi without it. Hungarians and Czechoslovakians also use Noémi but the French spell it Noémie. Today Noemi is one of the most popular female names in Italy but it is also ranked quite high in Hungary. In terms of Spanish-speakers, Hispanic-Americans use Noemí in the United States but it is most popular in the South American country of Chile.