A Hebrew biblical name meaning "pure" or "innocent."
Zaccai is a biblical Hebrew name of genuine antiquity, appearing in the Old Testament Book of Ezra (2:9) and Nehemiah (7:14), where the "sons of Zaccai" are listed among the exiles returning to Judah from Babylonian captivity — placing the name firmly in the period of the sixth century BCE and the great upheaval of the Babylonian exile that shaped so much of the Hebrew Bible's final form. The name derives from the root *zakah*, meaning "pure," "innocent," or "clean," giving it a meaning of moral clarity and spiritual blamelessness.
It is closely related to the name Zacchaeus — the chief tax collector of Jericho in the Gospel of Luke who climbs a sycamore tree to see Jesus and is called down by name, transforming the moment into one of the New Testament's most vivid scenes of unexpected grace. Zaccai and its relatives Zacchaeus, Zechariah, and Zacharias spread through early Christian communities precisely because of that Gospel story, and the name family maintained a modest but continuous presence in European Jewish and Christian naming culture throughout the medieval period. In Talmudic tradition, Yochanan ben Zakkai — a first-century CE sage who survived the destruction of the Second Temple and reestablished Jewish learning at Yavneh — bears a closely related name, cementing Zaccai's place in the deepest strata of Jewish intellectual history.
In modern usage, Zaccai is exceptionally rare, which gives it an almost archaeological quality — a name recovered from deep historical layers and brought forward intact. For parents drawn to biblical names with genuine textual grounding and an unusual sound, Zaccai offers both distinction and substance.