Holiday Calendar

National Rebecca Day

Next celebratedMonday, August 9, 2027

For four years in the late 1830s, Welsh men in women's clothes came for the toll gates of the west after dark, calling themselves Rebecca and her daughters. National Rebecca Day honours the name they borrowed, from Genesis 24:60.

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Last updated September 6, 2026 · by the Holiday Calendar TeamHave an update or spot an error?
YEARLY DATEAugust 9
OBSERVED INInternationally
CATEGORYNames
ORIGIN

Community Origin

FOUNDING ENTITY
Not documented
FIRST OBSERVED
Not documented
HOW THE HOLIDAY CAME TO BE

A greeting kept alive by regional British newsrooms.

No founder, proclamation, or establishing record for National Rebecca Day has been located. Its documented life so far runs through regional British media and community accounts marking the date.

+ Know the story? Submit a founder Help us complete this holiday
INTRO

A borrowed blessing and four years of broken Welsh tollgates

The Rebeccas greeted on National Rebecca Day share their name with one of the stranger episodes in British protest history. For four years in the late 1830s and early 1840s, men disguised as women came for the toll gates of west Wales after dark. They called themselves Rebecca and her daughters.

The National Archives, which teaches the episode from its own document holdings, says the alias is most likely drawn from Genesis 24:60. In that verse Rebekah is blessed with the promise that her descendants will possess the gates of those who hate them. A verse about gates, and then a great many broken gates.

The modern observance is a much lighter thing. It survives mostly through British regional newsrooms and radio stations sending greetings to every Rebecca, Becky and Becca in earshot. The Rebeccas being greeted carry a name whose meaning the reference books still cannot agree on.

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ORIGINS

Rebecca Day history

INTRODUCTION

Genesis 24 is the longest chapter in the Book of Genesis, and it belongs to Rebekah. The Shalvi/Hyman Encyclopedia of Jewish Women notes that the verb "to go" is used of her seven times inside it. She is also the only matriarch in the account to receive a direct message from God.

CHAPTER 01

Out of scripture, into a given name

The name reached English readers long before English parents reached for it. The Dictionary of Medieval Names records it in the Wycliffite Bible of 1395, as the matriarch rather than as anybody's daughter. The spelling took a detour on the way: English inherited Rebecca from the Greek form standing at Romans 9:10, not straight from the Hebrew.

CHAPTER 02

The novel that carried her into the 1800s

In 1819 Ivanhoe was held up at the printers by a shortage of paper. Edinburgh did not get the book until 18 December. London waited until the last day of the year, because the ship carrying its copies hit a storm.

The first printing of 10,000 copies was gone in under two weeks. Scott's Rebecca is Isaac's daughter, held captive and then accused of witchcraft. She escapes execution by demanding trial by combat.

CHAPTER 03

Rebecca and her daughters

Twenty years later the name turned up on the roads of west Wales, where tolls were the grievance. A cart of lime taken eight miles inland could face tolls of as much as five shillings. A new gate at Efailwen went down in May 1839.

The protesters wrote as well as they smashed. One letter held by the archive, sent to the inhabitants of St Clears in 1842, is signed "Becca & children". By the following summer the movement had reached Carmarthen, where a crowd of 2,000 tried to burn down the workhouse.

CHAPTER 04

A lodge, and then a greeting

In 1850 an Odd Fellow named Schuyler Colfax was asked to write a degree for women. The Sovereign Grand Lodge voted it in on 20 September of the following year. Colfax later served as US Vice President.

The order took the name straight from scripture, describing Rebekah as a woman whose kindness to an unknown stranger best portrayed the character of women. The August observance is younger and far quieter. Who started it, or why they picked the date, sits outside the record.

WHY THIS DAY MATTERS

Why We Love National Rebecca Day

ARCHIVES

Ten archival descriptions sit under one borrowed name.

The National Library of Wales indexes the Rebecca riots as a subject heading with ten archival descriptions attached to it. One of them, the Nanteos estate correspondence, covers both the Cardiganshire riots and proposals to establish a police force.

CALENDAR

Elsewhere the name already has an official day

Sweden's Institute for Language and Folklore maintains 17 May as Rebecka's name day, shared with Ruben, and the Finland-Swedish almanac keeps the same date. That makes August 9 an informal parallel to a state-maintained calendar entry rather than a replacement for it.

SCHOLARSHIP

The figure behind the name is a textual outlier

The phrase 'mother's household' appears only four times in the entire Hebrew Bible, and one of those four is Rebekah's. The reference entry that catalogues that detail also flags the nurse she is given as a highly unusual circumstance in the text.

BY THE NUMBERS

National Rebecca Day by the Numbers

No. 13
Rebecca's US girls' rank, 1970s
137,285
US girls named Rebecca, 1970s
No. 184
Rebecca's US girls' rank, 2010s
5th
Rebecka's Swedish newborn rank, 1994

TIMELINE

Timeline

The name enters English scripture

The Wycliffite Bible carries Rebecca, as the biblical matriarch rather than as a name in use.

First Swedish record

Sweden's language institute dates the earliest attestation of Rebecka in Sweden to this year.

Ivanhoe reaches Edinburgh

Walter Scott's novel is published on 18 December, its title page already dated the following year.

The Efailwen tollgate falls

A new gate in Pembrokeshire is destroyed in May, the first incident of the Rebecca riots.

Odd Fellows adopt the Rebekah Degree

The Sovereign Grand Lodge votes it in on 20 September, creating the Daughters of Rebekah.

Earliest dated observance found

Liverpool Echo News marks National Rebecca Day on 9 August, the first dated evidence anyone keeps it.

MYTH VS FACT

Common Misconceptions

The myth

Rebecca is Hebrew for 'to tie' or 'to bind', and the meaning is settled.

The truth

The consonantal root is agreed; the sense is not. The University of Iowa's Bible and Archaeology resource states plainly that the meaning is uncertain, and Sweden's Institute for Language and Folklore calls it very uncertain, while the Online Etymology Dictionary and the Dictionary of Medieval Names both gloss it flatly as 'connection'.

The myth

Walter Scott modelled Rebecca of York on Rebecca Gratz of Philadelphia.

The truth

The American Jewish Historical Society reports the tradition and then removes its footing: many secondary accounts claim to have seen letters between Washington Irving and Scott saying so, yet nobody has seen those letters since. Asked about it in her lifetime, Gratz answered, 'They say so, my dear.'

The myth

Rebecca has always been a common English name.

The truth

It was not in English given-name use before the Reformation. The Dictionary of Medieval Names from European Sources places it among names taken up in the second half of the 1500s by Protestants reaching for the Old Testament, and its earliest English examples date from 1571.

GET INVOLVED

How to Celebrate National Rebecca Day

EDITOR'S PICK

Greet the Rebeccas, Beckys and Becs you know

The greeting is the whole observance, and the short forms are explicitly included wherever the day is marked. Send one message rather than a group post, because the day works best aimed at a person.

ASK

Ask a Rebecca which spelling she was given

Rebecca and Rebekah come from the same Hebrew name by two different routes, one of them through Greek. Most people who carry it have a family reason for the version they got.

LOOK

Look up where the name sat when you were born

The Social Security Administration publishes the 200 most popular American names for every decade, with the raw counts beside them. Its decade tables show exactly how far a name has climbed or fallen.

READ

Read the trial by combat chapters of Ivanhoe

Scott's Rebecca is the reason the name carried through the nineteenth century in English fiction. Edinburgh University Library's Walter Scott Digital Archive lays out the novel's composition and publication in detail.

SEARCH

Search the Welsh archives for Rebecca's daughters

The National Library of Wales catalogue lists estate papers and letters filed under the riots. Reading a landowner's correspondence about gate-breaking is a stranger way to spend the day, and a more interesting one.

Test your knowledge

How well do you know National Rebecca Day?

1 / 8

Which Bible verse do The National Archives link the Welsh Rebecca protesters to?

Answer

No. It is an unofficial observance with no legal standing found, so it is a normal working day.

COLOPHON

Sources

How we know what’s on this page. References, not endorsements.

12sources
6primary records
5independently dated
Primary records
The National Archives
Rebecca riots
The 1839 to 1843 Welsh toll gate protests, taught from original documents.
View source
National Library of Wales
Rebecca Riots, 1839-1844
Catalogue of estate papers and letters filed under the riots as a subject.
View source
Social Security Administration
Top names of the 1970s
The 200 most popular American names of the decade, with occurrence counts.
View source
Social Security Administration
Top names of the 2010s
The same decade ranking for the 2010s, showing how far the name fell.
View source
Institute for Language and Folklore2023-10
Rebecka (Rebecca)
Sweden's language institute on the name's almanac day, meaning and popularity.
View source
Independent Order of Odd Fellows
Odd Fellows Rebekahs
The order's own account of adopting the Rebekah Degree in 1851.
View source
Additional coverage
Jewish Women's Archive2021-06
Rebekah: Bible
Carol Meyers on how the Genesis account builds Rebekah as an active figure.
View source
University of Iowa
Hello, My Name Is: REBEKAH
Robert Cargill on the uncertain meaning and the Greek route into English.
View source
Edinburgh University Library2011-12
Ivanhoe, Walter Scott Digital Archive
Composition, delayed publication and reception of Scott's 1819 novel.
View source
American Jewish Historical Society2019-02
American Jewish History and Ivanhoe
Elizabeth Hyman on the Rebecca Gratz legend and its missing letters.
View source
Dictionary of Medieval Names from European Sources
Rebecca
Dictionary entry with the etymology and the earliest dated attestations.
View source
Dictionary of Medieval Names from European Sources2016-01
Protestant names: Old Testament influences on women's names
Sara Uckelman on the sixteenth-century Protestant uptake of Hebrew names.
View source
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