What was Jesus’s Real Name?

What was Jesus' real name? Jesus' name in Hebrew was Yeshua. So how did we get the name Jesus? And is Christ actually a last name? Perhaps the most well-known name in the entire world, Jesus Christ, is the name of the Messiah of the Christian faith. And that name has become pretty widespread, regardless of your personal beliefs. But there's something unusual about the name Jesus, since in the original copies of the Bible, his Hebrew name is actually written as Yeshua, which more closely aligns to the English name Joshua. So where did this translation come from? Well, this is a relatively compact history that has to do with things altering as some words became lost in translation. So let's start off with our first question, which is what language was the New Testament originally written in? Well, it wasn't written in English or Hebrew, but rather Greek. But notice how my question centered on the New Testament and not the whole Bible. That's because the Old Testament, or the books of the first half of the Bible, were written originally in Hebrew and Aramaic. But the latter half of the Bible, or New Testament, was written in Greek. So this leads us to our next question. How did Yeshua become translated to Jesus? In the text, a Greek-English lexicon compiled in the 19th century by Henry George Liddell, Robert Scott, and others, Yeshua was translated into ancient Greek as Yesus. And that's because the original authors of the New Testament were trying to convert the sound of the Hebrew name into Greek letters. But since they didn't have the letters or spelling to represent the sh sound in their language, they substituted an s sound in the middle. And that led them to Yesus. But even though there were other men with the first name Yeshua in the Bible in the Old Testament, and also men with the same name who were contemporaries of Jesus, their names were written in Hebrew and thus stuck closer to the Joshua translation once their names were converted into English. But it took a while for the J sound to be placed in front of Yesus. It wasn't until 16th century English translations of the Bible that Yesus was spelled as Jesus. So the men named Yeshua in the Old Testament became Joshuas, and the Yeshua of the New Testament was transliterated to Jesus. And the distinction of translation versus transliteration here is key. Translation is the act of changing a word from one language to its equivalent in another language, like book in English becoming libro in Spanish. But transliteration is the conversion of letters and sounds from one alphabet to another. For example, Greek has the letter phi, but that letter isn't a part of the alphabet in English, so it's phonetically transliterated fee. But that brings us to our third and final question. How did Christians arrive at the full title Jesus Christ? Well, according to an op-ed piece in Newsday written by Rabbi Mark Gelman, Hebrew naming practices don't favor last names, but rather take the form that demonstrates parental connections to a father or mother. Gelman notes, a Jewish name is your first name in Hebrew followed by a connecting word ben, which means son of. If you are male, or bat, which means daughter of. These connecting words are followed by the first name in Hebrew of your father, and in some cases, also the first name of your mother. He goes on to write that in some cases, your place of birth or origin could also be added to the end of your name in Hebrew to help distinguish between people with the same name from different places. But in the Christian faith, Jesus is noted as the son of Mary and God, so the traditional naming of Jesus son of Joseph, Mary's husband in the Bible, wouldn't be fitting. Instead, during his lifetime, he was known as Jesus of Nazareth, drawing the second half of his name from where he was from and not from either parent. The Christ portion of his name isn't a last name at all, but a word translated which means the Messiah, or God's anointed one, who was prophesied and foretold about in the Jewish faith. So Christ, in this case, functions more like a title, as in Jesus the anointed one, or Jesus the Messiah, rather than as a last name. So how does it all add up? In the case of the name Joshua, the name went directly from Hebrew to English. But in the case of the name Jesus, it traveled a more winding linguistic trajectory from Greek spellings to English. And it probably is because contemporary English naming practices follow a strict form of first name, then last name, like Danielle Bainbridge or John Doe, that a lot of us who speak English get a bit mixed up by thinking Christ is a last name instead of a title. So what do you think? Have anything else to add to our timeline? Drop it below. Be sure to follow Origin of Everything on YouTube and Facebook, and we'll see you next week. Thanks for all of your questions and comments from our episode on the etymology of the word gay. Here's what some of you had to say. 359 on YouTube noted that it was actually Hungarian human rights advocate Kalmaria Kırbeni who coined the terms homosexual and heterosexual in the 1860s. Kırbeni was an advocate for gay rights and was in favor of repealing discriminatory sodomy laws. So although the word did evolve into a medicalized term, that meaning came later on and was outside of its original intent. Thanks for sharing, 359, and for adding this crucial moment to our timeline. Samuel Boyden and Caroline, also on YouTube, wanted to follow up our episode with one on lavender linguistics, which is a term originated in William Leaf's Words Out, Gay Men's English, but has since gone on to refer to the linguistic practices of the broader LGBT community. And Indigo Mae Rowe wants to hear more on Polari, and mentioned checking out the BBC radio show Round the Horn, which ran from 1965 to 1968, and featured the characters Julian and Sandy, who sometimes spoke Polari to each other, another excellent addition to our episode timeline. So this definitely gives me an excuse to go dig into some more books, and also to listen to radio bits from the 1960s. And I think that bringing in someone with experience in linguistics to collaborate on this follow-up episode could be really fascinating. Thanks for all your comments and questions. Also, a special shout-out to Diana Salinas, Kelsey Adjango, and Elaine Ha for commenting on Facebook. So that's it for now, and I'll see you next week.