John

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John is an English masculine given name.

Origins

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The name John is speculated to derive, via Latin and Greek, from the Hebrew name Yochanan (יוחנן) meaning "Yahweh is gracious". Yochanan was the name of several important rabbis in the Second Temple Period in Israel, such as Yochanan ben Zakai and Yochanan ben Nuri.

The name had gained popularity among Jews in Judea and Galilee by the time the area became a province of the Roman Empire in 6 A.D.^{[citation needed]} It was the given name of Yochanan ben Zechariah, a Jewish prophet known in English as John the Baptist. New Testament was written in Greek, and the Hebrew name was adapted in Greek as Ἰωάννης, Iōannēs. The name Ioannes became extremely popular among the early Christians, and bearers include such noted members of the early church as Ioannes Chrysostomos.

Continental Europe

The name came into use in other parts of the Christianized Roman Empire. The Western areas of the Roman Empire did not, however, speak Greek like the areas in the East. Instead, they spoke Latin. Accordingly, in the Western part of the Roman Empire the name was Latinized as Iohannes (pronounced like the Greek).

The local populations in these areas of the Roman Empire soon changed Roman names to fit their own dialect, which included dropping the suffixes -us and -es from such names. In the Roman sphere of influence, Johannes became the Italian Giovanni, the Germanic Johann, and the Slavic languages Ivan and Jovan, and Ion in the area on the Black Sea that is now Romania. On the outskirts of the Empire in the newly converted Ireland it became the Irish Eoin. In some cases, the pronunciation of the original initial "Y"/"I" also changed to variants of "J", so that in Iberia the name eventually changed to the Spanish Juan and the medieval Portuguese Juo/Joane (now João) and Ivo. In Gaul, it became the Old French Jehan and later Jean (pronounced /ʒɑ̃/). In the Occitano-Romance area it became Joan (femenine, Joana) and Jan in Occitan and Catalan, from older Iouan and Iohan. In Albanian, Gjon, or either Gjin is used for males.

In English speaking countries

In the 11th century the French duke William the Conqueror invaded and conquered England and brought his French knights and their dialect with him. In England, the French name Jean came to be pronounced like the current name John, though prior to the adoption into English of the letter 'J', the letter 'I' was used. Seventeenth Century English texts still spelled the name Iohn. Since then, it has been spelled in its current form, John.

John has been a common given name in English speaking countries, and either it or William was the number one name in England and English speaking North America from around 1550 until the middle of the twentieth century. John was the most popular name given to male infants in the United States until 1924, and though its use has fallen off gradually since then, John was still the 20th most common name for boys on the Social Security Administration's list of names given in 2006.^[1]

It was also long the most common male name in the UK, but by 2004 it had fallen out of the top 50 names for newborn boys in England and Wales.^[2] By contrast Jack, which was a nickname for John but is established as a name in its own right, was the most popular name given to newborn boys in England and Wales every year from 1995 to 2005.^[2][3]

In the United Kingdom, the name John has not been a popular name for members of the royal household. However, King John signed the Magna Carta in 1215; Prince Alexander John, the youngest son of King Edward VII, died shortly after birth, and Prince John, the youngest son of King George V, died in his sleep in 1919. As such, the name John has been considered unlucky by the British Royal Family and its use avoided.^{[citation needed]} It was reported^[who?] that Diana, Princess of Wales wished to name her elder son "John", after her own father, but was prevented from doing so by royal tradition.^{[citation needed]}

Common mistakes

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Because the name Jonathan is sometimes abbreviated as Jon, John is sometimes falsely considered to be a short form of Jonathan, especially in the United States. John is a variation of the Hebrew name Yôḥānnān, whereas Jonathan derives from the Hebrew יוֹנָתָן Yônāṯān, which means "Gift from the Lord" and thus is a longer version of Nathan.

See also

• Alternate forms for the name John

References