Hebrew names - which came first?

After my last preaching in Ruth I began thinking about something.

Which came first? The meaning of a Hebrew name or the person (who most likely exemplified it)?

Put another way, did the OT characters 'live up to their name' or are the meanings we now read simply develop as descriptors of the person?

Any suggested readings of someone who has tackled this topic before?

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Graham Criddle

The Factbook enter on Names and Naming could be a good place to start

David Paul

At Tohraah study, I once described Yohnaah (Jonah) in a negative way--I called him a proto-Pharisee--and a woman there "corrected" me by saying that yohnaah means "dove". I'm guessing that to her that meant he was therefore inevitably "harmless as". I pointed out that Laabhaan (Laban) means "white", and he was as pure as the freshly driven sludge. Names can be descriptive of an individual's traits and character, but there's no guarantee. At times it is pretty obvious that a name is intended as either facetious, ironic, duplicitous, or something else along those lines. Of course, there are also a few Naabhaals in the Bible, too. Poor guy...quite likely a self-fulfilling prophecy.