Hebrew word · H3818

לֹא עַמִּי

'ami

Not My People

A symbolic personal name, 'Not-My-People', made by putting a negative in front of a noun with 'my'. Its pair is Lo-Ruhamah, 'Not-Pitied' (1:6).

Appears 2 times in 1 verses of the Hebrew Old Testament. ·

What it means

A man living at the time of Divided Monarchy, only mentioned at Hos.1.9;

son of: Hosea (H1954J) and Gomer (H1586H);

brother of: Jezreel (H3157K), Lo-ruhamah (H3819)

§ Lo-ammi = "not my people"

symbolic name given by the prophet Hosea to his second son by Gomer

Abridged from Brown, Driver and Briggs, A Hebrew and English Lexicon of the Old Testament (1906), via STEPBible.org (CC BY 4.0).

In depth

From the study of Hosea 1:9

Range of meaning

A symbolic personal name, 'Not-My-People', made by putting a negative in front of a noun with 'my'. Its pair is Lo-Ruhamah, 'Not-Pitied' (1:6).

Against the English

Translations either transliterate it ('Lo-ammi') or translate it ('Not My People'). Transliteration hides the meaning from English readers, and translation loses the sense that it is a real name the boy would carry.

Used elsewhere in the period

Prophetic sign-names belong to the same eighth-century period: Isaiah's sons Shear-jashub, 'a remnant will return' (Isa 7:3), and Maher-shalal-hash-baz, 'quick to the plunder' (Isa 8:1–4), and Immanuel (Isa 7:14). Hosea reverses his own children's names in 2:1 and 2:23 (Hebrew 2:3, 2:25): 'I will say to Lo-Ammi, You are my people.' The reversal is taken up in Rom 9:25–26 and 1 Pet 2:10.

Where it appears

Hosea · 2

  1. Hosea 1:9 לֹ֣א עַמִּ֑י Lo-, Ammi

    And the LORD said, “Name him Lo-ammi, for you are not My people, and I am not your God.

    Here: The first half of the name Lo-Ammi. Starting a personal name with a flat 'not' was startling, because Israelite names normally said something good about God (Ammi-el, 'my kinsman is God').

Word data: STEPBible.org (CC BY 4.0), main text only.