The original Hebrew form of Jochebed, meaning "Yahweh is glory" or "God is honored."
Yocheved holds a singular place in the history of Hebrew names: she is the first person in the entire Hebrew Bible to bear a name compounded with a form of the divine name YHWH. The name combines the divine element Yo (a shortened form of the Tetragrammaton) with kaved or kavod, meaning 'glory' or 'honor,' yielding the radiant meaning 'God is glory' or 'glory of God.' That she appears in Exodus as the mother of Moses, Aaron, and Miriam — arguably the three most consequential figures in the entire Exodus narrative — makes the theological weight of her name feel entirely fitting.
Yocheved's story is brief but indelible: she hid the infant Moses for three months to protect him from Pharaoh's decree, then placed him in a basket of reeds on the Nile, an act of desperate faith that changed world history. The Midrash expands her portrait considerably, crediting her with great wisdom and identifying her with Puah, one of the heroic Hebrew midwives who defied Pharaoh. In Jewish tradition she is revered as one of the righteous women whose merit sustained the Israelites through Egyptian bondage.
As a given name Yocheved has remained in continuous use in traditional Jewish communities across the centuries, particularly among Ashkenazi Jews where it is sometimes rendered Yocheved, Yokheved, or in the Yiddish-inflected form. It is a name worn with deep intentionality — chosen by families who wish to connect a daughter directly to the biblical foundations of Jewish identity, to motherhood as an act of moral courage, and to the idea that human glory is a reflection of the divine.