David Box

(male) Biblical name, borne by the greatest of all the kings of Israel, whose history is recounted with great vividness in the first and second books of Samuel and elsewhere. As a boy he killed the giant Philistine Goliath with his slingshot. As king of Judah, and later of all Israel, he expanded the power of the Israelites and established the security of their kingdom. He was also noted as a poet, many of the Psalms being attributed to him. The Hebrew derivation of the name is uncertain; it is said by some to represent a nursery word meaning ‘darling’. It is a very popular Jewish name, but is almost equally common among Gentiles in the English-speaking world. It is particularly common in Wales and Scotland, having been borne by the patron saint of Wales (see Dewi) and by two medieval kings of Scotland.

English: from Middle English, Old English box ‘box tree’ (Latin buxus), in any of a number of possible applications. It may have been a topographic name for someone who lived by a box thicket, a habitational name from one of the places called Box, in Gloucestershire, Hertfordshire, and Wiltshire, or a metonymic occupational name for someone who worked box wood, which is very hard and for this reason was used to make a variety of tools. In some cases it may even have been a nickname for a person with pale or yellow skin, for example as the result of jaundice, a reference to the color of box wood.