עמון
Generally written as Ammon in English, but TheBibleNet prefers Amon.
The name comes from Am (עמ) = "people/kindred/relative".
Ben Ami, the eponymous ancestor according to Genesis 19:38, was supposedly Lot's illegitimate son, fathered on his younger daughter after the holocaust at Sedom and Amorah. Thus Ben-Ami means "son of my kindred" literally as well as etymologically! What then was really going on? 1 Samuel 11:11 calls the people Beney Amon, suggesting they were sons of Amon, not Ami.
The Beney Amon lived between the Yavok (Jabbok), a tributary of the Yarden (Jordan), and the river Arnon beyond the Yarden; which is to say, they were hill-people, in what we today think of as the southern end of the Golan Heights, Bashan and Gil'ad back then. Gad and Re'u-Ven were their immediate neighbours, East Menasheh slightly further north, but in its case rather more bordering Aram.
1 Samuel 11:11 has Nachash the Beney Amon massacred by Sha'ul after besieging him at Yavesh Gil'ad. Since Nachash means "serpent", we can either read this mythologically as Sha'ul, the Lord of the Underworld, slaying the dragon, or recognise the dragon merely as the Amonite banner (as it was Mosheh's), denoting that they were carrying the goddess into battle with them as their source of courage and inspiration.
Numbers 21:21/35 has Siychon the Beney Amon refusing passage to the Beney Yisra-El and attacking them at Ya'zer (יַעְזֵר). The Beney Yisra-El response was the defeat of Amon and the razing of their capital Cheshbon.
1 Kings 11:1/5 records that one of King Shelomoh's (Solomon's) wives was an Amonite, and that through her he came to worship the god Milkom, a variation of Moloch. So perhaps all this is just an ancient history of enmity that was finally patched up in Solomonic times. Or not quite patched up, because:
Ezekiel 25:2 ff prophecies their capture from the east (apparently because they used a rude word as a blasphemy against the Yisra-Eli god); and
Nehemiah 13:23 complains that Beney Yisra-El are intermarrying with Beney Amon, as well as women of Ashdod (Pelishtim presumably) and Mo-Av (Mo-Av? but didn't Bo'az himself marry a Mo'abitess, named Rut, whose scion was King David, whose scion will be the...); and doesn't Torah insist that marriage to Maobites is strictly prohibiteed?... orthodox Jews can find the answer to this little conundrum here.
Is Amon perhaps a variant of Amun, the ram-headed sun-god later associated with Zeus? Probably not, being Egyptian, but it is not impossible.
Nehemiah 13:23 complains that Beney Yisra-El are intermarrying with Beney Amon, as well as women of Ashdod (Pelishtim presumably) and Mo-Av (Mo-Av? but didn't Bo'az himself marry a Mo'abitess, named Rut, whose scion was King David, whose scion will be the...); and doesn't Torah insist that marriage to Maobites is strictly prohibiteed?... orthodox Jews can find the answer to this little conundrum here.
Is Amon perhaps a variant of Amun, the ram-headed sun-god later associated with Zeus? Probably not, being Egyptian, but it is not impossible.
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