← Glossary · Named giants (glossary) · All races · Nephilim
Giants appear across scripture, the Qumran scrolls, myth and saga, ancient historiography, and the modern medical record. This section lists the ones that are named — the individuals a source actually calls by name — and keeps each one tied to the kind of source it rests on.
The source class is the point of the page. A giant named in Genesis, a giant named in a Qumran fragment, a giant reported by Pliny, and a man measured by physicians at Washington University are four different kinds of claim, and mixing them is how this subject usually goes wrong. Heights are shown as recorded by that source, in that source’s own units, never converted into an assertion of fact. Where two traditions give different figures for the same person — Goliath is the standard case — both are shown.
Every card carries two icons: opens that giant’s own page, and opens the glossary definition.
For giant races and lineages rather than individuals (Nephilim, Anakim, Rephaim, Emim, Zamzumim, Gibborim), see All races. For the Watchers named as the fathers of the Nephilim — Shemihazah, Azazel and the rest of the two hundred — see Fallen Angels and Grigori / Watchers.
Named in the Dead Sea Scrolls (notably the Book of Giants), 1 Enoch, Jubilees and related non-canonical literature.
Also known as: Ohya
Lineage: Nephilim (son of Shemihazah) · race detail
Where & when: Mount Hermon / Mesopotamia · Pre-Flood
Stature as recorded: Not stated individually; 1 Enoch 7:2 gives the giants as 3,000 cubits
References: 4Q203; 4Q530; 4Q531; 1 Enoch 7:2
Also known as: Hahya
Lineage: Nephilim (son of Shemihazah) · race detail
Where & when: Mount Hermon / Mesopotamia · Pre-Flood
Stature as recorded: Not stated individually
References: 4Q530; 4Q531
Also known as: Mahway
Lineage: Nephilim (son of Barakel) · race detail
Where & when: Mount Hermon to the ends of the earth · Pre-Flood
Stature as recorded: Not stated individually
References: 4Q530; 4Q203 frag. 8
Also known as: Gilgamos
Lineage: Nephilim (named among the giants) · race detail
Where & when: Mesopotamia / Uruk · Pre-Flood in the scroll; Early Dynastic in the epic
Stature as recorded: Epic of Gilgamesh: eleven cubits in height, four cubits across the chest
References: 4Q530; 4Q531; Epic of Gilgamesh Tablet I
Also known as: Humbaba; Huwawa
Lineage: Nephilim (named among the giants) · race detail
Where & when: Cedar Forest / Mesopotamia · Pre-Flood in the scroll
Stature as recorded: Not stated
References: 4Q203; 4Q530
Also known as: Adam ha-Rishon
Lineage: First man (of vast stature in aggadah) · race detail
Where & when: Eden / the earth · Primordial
Stature as recorded: Talmud Chagigah 12a: from the earth to the firmament, and from one end of the world to the other, before being diminished
References: Babylonian Talmud, Chagigah 12a; Sanhedrin 38b; Genesis Rabbah 8:1
76 named giants on record · 19 resting on a first-hand examination or eyewitness report. Select a class to filter.
Unnamed giants. This page lists names. Scripture also describes giants it does not name — the six-fingered man of Gath (2 Samuel 21:20), the four sons of the Rapha as a group, the Emim and Zamzumim as peoples. Those belong with the races and lineages, not here.
Unnamed skeleton reports. Nineteenth- and twentieth-century newspaper accounts of giant skeletons in burial mounds, and the red-haired Si-Te-Cah of Paiute oral tradition associated with Lovelock Cave, Nevada, describe peoples and finds rather than named individuals, and almost none survive independent verification. They are not listed as named giants.
Fiction. Figures invented for literature or advertising — Paul Bunyan among them — are excluded. The one fabrication that is listed, the Cardiff Giant, appears under historiography because the fraud itself is a documented historical event with a paper trail, and because the most famous American giant being a carved block of gypsum is the single most useful fact on this page.
Map of Named Giants All races Nephilim Grigori / Watchers Fallen Angels Glossary