Ephraim

The name Ephraim is a boy's name of Hebrew origin meaning "fruitful, fertile, productive". Ephraim is an Old Testament name we would place high on the list of neglected Biblical possibilities, solid but not solemn. In Genesis, Ephraim is the second son of Joseph, and founder of one of the twelve tribes of Israel. The name also appears as characters in Oliver Goldsmith's The Vicar of Wakefield, Charles Dickens's novel Little Dorrit, and in works by Sir Walter Scott and Robert Louis Stevenson. More recently, Ephraim Black was a character in the Twilight saga, a shape-shifter who was the great-grandfather of Jacob. Father and son violinist and actor Efrem Zimbalist, Jr. and Sr, simplified the spelling.