peresh

The name occurs once, in 1 Chronicles 7:16, within the genealogy of Manasseh: Peresh is a son of Machir by his wife Maacah, brother of Sheresh, and father of Ulam and Rakem. The consonants are pointed exactly as the common noun peresh, "faecal matter found in the intestines of a sacrificial victim" (BDB), and the Masoretes understood the name as the same word, though here it functions purely as a personal name rather than as the cultic term of the Priestly texts. As with the noun, no transparent Hebrew etymology is secure: the traditional link to a root meaning "to make distinct" is generally judged a folk etymology, and the sense of the noun rests on the Aramaic and Arabic cognates rather than on any attested Hebrew verb. Standard treatments of the Chronicler's genealogies (Japhet; Knoppers) read the verse as a straightforward notice of a branch of the Machirite line, with no textual dispute over the name itself.