Ethnan: a man in the tribe of Judah, the third of the sons of Helah named in the Chronicles family lists.
Ethnan turns up exactly once in the Bible, inside a short family list. Ashhur, the father of Tekoa, had two wives, Helah and Naarah, and Ethnan is the last of the three sons credited to Helah. Nothing else is said about him: no story, no descendants, no later mention anywhere in Scripture.
The name is startling in Hebrew, because it is written and said exactly like the ordinary word for the payment given to a prostitute (אֶתְנַן). The lexicons keep the two apart, and nothing in the verse links the man to that sense. Hebrew names built on the verb "to give" are common, and this one is usually understood along those lines, as something close to "gift". None of that reaches an English reader, who simply meets the name "Ethnan" and moves on.
These chapters of Chronicles are not simply a record of individuals. The lists running through them also carry the names of towns, clans, and households in the hill country of Judah, so a name that appears here once may stand for a family group or a settlement rather than for a single man.