Dorcas

Dorcas is the Greek translation of the Aramaic Tabitha, both meaning gazelle, and the name belongs most famously to a disciple in the Book of Acts, a seamstress of Joppa whose kindness to widows the apostle Peter is said to have repaid with a miracle. The Puritans picked it up in the seventeenth century with their usual enthusiasm for biblical outliers, and Dorcas societies — women's charitable sewing circles — flourished in English and American parishes well into the Victorian era. Two brisk syllables, DOR-kas. The name carries lamplight and calico, the memory of hands at useful work.