The name has a feminine ending. It could be that this was her husband’s actual name, with a rare feminine ending, but the reality is that it kind of rubs it in that things are so bad.
The name itself means torches
or lamps
(see Judges 15:5), but this does not really have anything to do with the story. It has been suggested that wife of Lappidoth
means that Deborah was a woman of fire,
a spirited woman, a sort of Amazonian woman, like Joan of Arc. But this motif is not really there in the passage. And there is no need to rob Deborah of a husband through such an interpretation.
4 Now Deborah, a prophetess, the wife of Lappidoth, was judging Israel at that time.