heth

Heth is a name that appears in several different contexts in scholarly and religious literature. In the Hebrew Bible, Heth is listed as a son of Canaan, the grandson of Noah through Ham. Genesis 10:15 states that Canaan begat Sidon and Heth, among others. In biblical geography the term “the land of Heth” or “the people of Heth” is used to refer to the Hittites, an ancient Anatolian group. The identification of Heth with the historical Hittites is a subject of scholarly discussion, since the Hittite empire flourished in central Anatolia during the Bronze to early Iron Age. The biblical Heth is generally treated as an eponymous founder or ancestor rather than a well-documented historical figure.

Heth is also the name of a Hebrew letter, Ḥet (ח). It is the eighth letter of the Hebrew alphabet and has a consonantal value of a voiceless fricative produced in the pharyngeal or velar region, depending on linguistic tradition. The letter’s numeric value in gematria is 8. In modern Hebrew, the letter is typically transliterated as ch or ḥ and appears in many common words such as chesed (kindness) or mechon (equipment).

Beyond biblical and linguistic uses, Heth may occur as a personal name or part of place names in historical sources; it is not common as a contemporary given name or surname. In scholarly contexts, the term is mainly encountered as a historical-biblical proper name or as a reference to the Hebrew letter.