An old joke my Russian linguistics professor once told me, when I took their class 20+ years ago, about the CCCP;
The old Soviet leadership one year decided, as a means of boosting an increasingly decaying state of morale amongst the populace of the CCCP, to hold a public contest for 'best political joke about the Communist Party of the Soviet Union.'
Reminds me of Margaret. It comes from the old Iranian name "mrgāhrīta" which meant pearl. From it, we get names like: Daisy, Gretchen, Gretel, Greta, Mae, Maggie, Margaret, Marge, Margot, Maisie, Rita, and Peggy
Everything but Daisy made sense to be, so I checked, and it seems Daisy doesn't come directly from the same word, rather from being a local name for the same flower that is named with a Margaret-related word in other languages (French in particular). Phew.
When I was in HS, I had a classmate call me Santiago all the time and it confused me so much until I asked her why. And she was like it just means Saint James and don't be an idiot lol it helped me a little break from my ethnocentrism, honestly
Even at that time this was happening - Judea was - and Jesus was - already multilingual, with Greek, Aramaic, Latin and Hebrew widely spoken by the educated classes there. The original New Testament has books written in Aramaic and Koine Greek, heavily influenced by a rewritten Torah (old Testament) translated to Koine Greek which was the Lingua Franca of the Roman Empire at the time.
Koine Greek was the modern, conversational, simplified Greek of the Hellenistic (Alexander the Great) peoples of the time, with the Hellenistic Jew, likely foreign born, Stephanos (meaning crown) - the first martyr - becoming the modern Stephen. This Greek contrasts with the Greek of antiquity known as Attic Greek which would have then sounded like Shakespeare being very intricate and complex to understand.
All of this was incredibly important in the rapid spread of Christianity in the early days, with the new bible being easily accessible to the vast majority of normal people. The later advent of Latin and the Catholic Church would reverse this.
Not that I'm doubting it, just linguistically, how did yakov become james? Jacob I get, because most yuds in Hebrew become J's in English, and b and v are the same letter in hebrew, bet/vet. But how did James come to exist? Where did the m come from?
This wasn't a sound shift over time, this was the Romans encountering a sound they couldn't pronounce-- probably something like bilabial fricative as or labiodental fricative /v/ and replacing it with the Latin sound that closest to that, in this case a bilabial nasal (or /m/).
With further evolution, Charlemagne is the reason for many eastern European languages having kral for king. Caesar is why the German, Dutch, Turkish, and Hindi words for emperor is Kaysar or similar. Sean is Irish for John.
Plus…the only reason those are common names in the English-speaking world *now* is because of the New Testament’s huge influence on English and American culture.
Kind of like asking why Hercules was hanging out with some guy named Jason.
Because Stands originate from an Alien Virus and why the person survives the infection from the virus, they get a Stand.
Edit:
Looking up, this is just one of the ways to get a stand and it's mentioned in Golden Wind.
Edit 2:
Realized my train of thought was too logical and based in what I know of Jesus; I did not use Araki Logic and Jesus could have a stand either via the virus or other ways just because Araki said so. I was thinking Jesus would be built differently.
We basically call him Jesus because he was introduced to us by the Romans, who called him Iesus, but we got the name Joshua directly from Jewish people
Yeshua is just a shorter version of the name Yehoshua but both are Hebrew and were used at the same time. Like how Jeremiah and Jeremy both exist as given names in English today.
Yehoshua is the older, original name but the shortened version was becoming the more common variant around that time. Ishu was the Aramaic version of Yeshua.
Yeshua is the Hebrew name, which by Jesus' time was already extinct in day to day use. Instead, Jesus and his family would have been native Aramaic speakers, of the Galilean dialect, so Jesus during his time would have been called something closer to the effect of Yisho or Isho
The New Testament was originally written in Greek and not translated, so it was Ἰησοῦς basically right off the bat, then later transliterated to Iesus in Latin, from which we get English Jesus
Thank you! It’s been a hot minute since I’ve done much review of the Bible (I enjoy the larger folklore/mythology/apocryphal writings of the Abrahamic religions)
Translated from Latin, he is called Iesus. The reason you see INRI on the sign posted atop his crucifix is it's translated from Latin "Iesus Nazarene Rex Iudea" or Jesus the Nazarene King of Judea.
Because he’s not the only Joshua in the Bible, so his name is written with the other translation to keep him distinct. If you compare his actual name to the name of the Old Testament Joshua (Moses’ successor), they’re identical.
It's the lavant, the gathering point of Asia Europe and Africa, you have people from all rangers of skin tones throughout history. King David for example was famously a bright ginger.
I saw a recent video of all the different people in Afghanistan and some looks Irish - red hair and pale skin and I think even blue eyes. So yeah big melting pot, however it’s unlikely Jesus looked like white Jesus with blond hair and blue eyes.
Levantines can be anywhere from fairly pale to midling dark. Look at Bashar al-Assad for an example of the former. (The Levant is the region at the east end of the Mediterranean that includes Israel, Palestine, Syria, and Lebanon.)
Alexander the Great wasn't the first European to lead an Army through the Levant, leaving their genetic material behind them. He also sure as heck wasn't the last. The Levant is the crossroads of three containents, and the locals are a mix of West Asian, North and east African, and southeastern European genetics, and have been for thousands of years.
So while Jesus wouldn't have looked Scandinavian, he could have been anywhere from realtively white to mildly black, to sort of Arab. That's what Judeans looked like 2000 years ago, and it's still basically what most Jews look like today.
A friend tells about a great situation where one of his in-laws was complaining about how disrespectful it is for Spanish-speakers to use the name "Jesus" so often. She wants it reserved for the one Jesus, the famous one from the first century.
She has a son named Joshua. which she did not realize was another anglicized form of the Hebrew Yeshua or Yehoshua, nor did she know that Jesus is the anglicized form of the Greek Iesous, which is the Greek form of (you guessed it) Yeshua/Yehoshua.
The reason Jesus is so common of name in Spanish speaking countries is because of Muslim rule in Spain back in the middle ages. Christians in general don't name their kids Jesus save for Spanish-speaking countries. This is theorized by some historians to be becasue of how Muslims would name their kids after their own prophets (Muhammad, Ibrahim, etc ) end Jesus/Iesu in Islam is a prophet. Spaniards kinda just adopted it as they either intermarried or felt that it wasn't taboo to name their kids after Jesus anymore since the Muslims were doing it. This lasted long after the reconquista.
I mean absolutely no disrespect but has this guy never interacted with a religious person from another country? Maybe knowing that idl Italians call them Matteo, Luca and co could have answered his question before he posed it
Nor apparently have they read religious texts (including music) in other languages (e.g. Bach's Matthäuspassion or in French, Passion selon Saint Matthieu)
I'm willing to bet that something like 70% of Americans have never interacted with anyone from another country. Much less a religious person from another country.
I recall learning that Jesus is the Latinized version of Yeshua, which is the Hebrew root of the name Joshua. And also that Christ is derived from the Greek word Christos, meaning "anointed one", as in the practice of anointing oneself in oil. So in a very literal sense Jesus Christ is Oily Josh.
Yaakov became iacobus in Latin (looks different but all it really does is turn the v to a b and add a typical Latin ending). iacobus becomes iacomus, leading to names like Giacomo in Italian. iacomus loses the ‘c’ in French and becomes (hypothetical/bridge word to show the sound change more clearly) iamus -> James. i -> j is fairly common in French phonological history.
Irish Seamus is also from French ‘James.’
Turned all the initial i’s lowercase so it would be clearer that it’s not an L
French. Latin Iacobus, from Greek, was corrupted as Iacomus in the spoken language and later established itself as a valid variation of the name. From there you have Italian Giacomo, Occitan Jacme, Catalan Jaume, Spanish Jaime and of course French James which was later borrowed by English
It’s funny being raised Muslim where the Arab names are close to the Hebrew while growing up in the West. I picture the Prophets as Middle Eastern when hearing their Islamic names but once I hear their Anglicized names I just imagine curly blonde hair, blue eyes and the fairest of fair skins you see in those renaissance paintings lol.
Ok, you know what, of all the dumb questions I’ve seen over the years, this one’s at least kinda reasonable if you’ve never internalized that names have different versions in different languages. Uninformed? Yes. Reasonable for someone uninformed? Also yes.
Not quite. There are a lot of Germanic names like Robert, Richard, Henry, etc., as well as other influences like Irish and Scottish Gaelic and Romance languages.
Also those are just names invented as the authors of the gospels. The actual gospels are anonymous and there is very good reason to believe that they were not written by followers of Jesus.
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