Daniel 1:6-7

6, 7. It was quite the common thing for Assyrian, Babylonian, and Egyptian kings to take new names themselves on special occasions, or give new names to members of the royal family. (Compare Genesis 41:45; 2Ki 23:34 ; 2 Kings 24:17.) So Tiglath-pileser was also known as Pulu (compare 2 Kings 15:19); Shalmaneser, as Ulula’a; and Assurbanipal, when he placed the Egyptian prince Psammetichus at the head of a province, changed his name to Nebo-sezibani. Daniel (Hebrews, “God is my judge”) receives the name of Belteshazzar, probably a contraction of Bel-balatsu-usur, “Bel, protect his life” (Fr. Delitzsch). Most Assyriologists consider as hypercritical the remark of Professor Sayce that there is one letter wrong in the spelling of the Babylonian word corresponding to Belteshazzar, and that therefore we have here “a compound which has no sense and would be impossible in the Babylonian language.” It is now known that the Babylonian scribes even spelled the names of their own kings differently at different times, just as the Hebrew scribes spelled David one way in Kings and another in Chronicles. (See also note Daniel 4:8.) The companions of Daniel who bear names meaning, respectively, “The Lord Jehovah is gracious,” “Who is like God” (or, “Who is what God is”), and “Jehovah is helper” receive as new names Shadrach, Shudur-Aku (“Command of Aku” Aku being the Babylonian moon-god); Meshach, a probable Babylonian original for which cannot be suggested; and Abednego, or rather Abed-Nebo (“Servant of Nebo”), a name which Sayce has himself found in an inscription of the fifth or sixth century B.C. The objection of Jewish copyists to writing the names of heathen deities may account for the change of consonants here. There are numbers of instances of Jews settled at Babylon taking Babylonian names. (See, for example, Records of the Past, 4:107; Zeits. fur Assy., 13:329, etc.)