ZACHARY SEMETA

English vernacular form of the New Testament Greek name Zacharias, a form of Hebrew Zechariah ‘God has remembered’. This was the name of the father of John the Baptist, who underwent a temporary period of dumbness for his lack of faith (Luke 1), and of a more obscure figure, Zacharias son of Barachias, who was slain ‘between the temple and the altar’ (Matthew 23:35; Luke 11:51). In the United States it is familiar as the name of a 19th-century president, Zachary Taylor. Since the 1990s the name has been remarkably popular in the English-speaking world, especially in the United States.