Does anybody know what the deal is with so many names beginning with the letter J? A quick look at a dictionary or a Scrabble game will tell you that J is one of the least used letters in the alphabet, yet when it comes to proper names it’s hard to find a more popular letter. A friend suggested it was just a trend but I reminded her of a certain Jewish carpenter and one Mediteranean potentate and his namesake calendar, just to name two ancient J folks. My guess is that there is some sort of mystical and/or numerological significance to the 10 letter of the alphabet. Am I right? Or is it indeed the longest lasting trend since bell-bottom jeans.
Except that neither of those were spelt with a J until recent times, for the simple reason that only in the last 200 years or so has J been differentiated from I. Before then J didn’t exist as a separate letter; I and J were considered different forms of the same letter. Early dictionaries ran I and J words into a single alphabetical sequence (so “jam” came before “iambic”). Earlier still, I was used for both the vowel and the consonant and J didn’t even exist. Julius Caesar’s name was spelt “IVLIVS” (there was a similar confusion between U and V).
A big reason for the relative prevalence of initial J in popular names is that many names are ultimately derived from biblical Hebrew. The initial Y in many of these Hebrew names morphed over time into initial J in English (cf. the pronunciation of initial J in German, Swedish, etc.).
A lot of these biblical names starting with Y were praises to God – IIRC, that initial Y is something of a prefix standing for the name “Yahweh”. So that’s why they were so common in old Hebrew.
The details in the above are semi-sketchy … but the gist I believe to be correct.
That was yet another avenue for some more “J” names to get into English. Latin-derived names that were pronounced (not spelled) with an initial “y” ended up spelled (and pronounced) in English with initial Js (Julian, Justin, etc.).
A few J names are modifications of other kinds of names, too – Jennifer is essentially a form of Guinevere, with the initial G softening up.
I advise you to dig no further.
I just wanted to add that I know at least three families who have named all their children with J names. I also know one family who named all their children A names. I have no idea of the significance of either of these statements.
Being that in real life, I am a Jane, I have nothing to offer.
It’s coincidental, with an assortment of factors contributing. First, Biblical names have always constituted a small substrate, and a fair chunk of them are theophoric, with the /yehu-/ morpheme in lead position. Some of the Biblical names became names of apostles and saints, which were common in other main contributing cultures. Then there were Greek and Latin figures, with a normal quantity of /Y-/ names.
Now, contemplate English’s tendency to borrow intact, and re-borrow after linguistic evolution has occurred. (E.g., a Roman Catholic priest, Prester John, and a preaching elder in the Presbyterian Church have precisely the same title in Greek, borrowed into English three distinct times.)
So Yakob ben Yitzhak, eponymous father of the Israelites, gives rise to Jacob, Jake, Jacques, Jack (yeah, it’s a nickname for John, but in origin it’s a Jacob derivative), Jock, and like forms. But after variations, it also gives James, Jim, Jaime, Iago, Diego, and related forms. Iakov bar Zebedee had a brother Iochanan bar Zebedee, who gave English John, Jean, Jeanne, Jeannette, Jan, Janet, Johann, Johannes, Giovanni, Ian, Iain, Ivan, etc. Add in Jonathan, Jude, Joel, Joshua, Jesus, Judith, Job, Jeremy, Jeremiah, Jerome, Jonah, Joan, Joann, Joanne, etc., and you see a lot of common names from Biblical sources.
Now add Jason, Justin, Justine, Julius, Julie, Julia, and a small assortment of other Greek and Roman derived names. Then pick up the handful of borrowings from other languages that coincidentally give rise to J- names, from Jin and Jinghiz to Jennifer to Jurgen.
Net result is coincidental convergence giving rise to the plethora of J- names in modern English usage.
My understanding was that the origin of Jack and Jock is in John + -kin (a common English diminutive-izing suffix).
Isn’t Juergen a variation of Georg? So there it could similar to Jeffrey/Geoffrey except that in German, G is never pronounced like J.
Acsenray: You may well be right. In etymological matters, there’s a lot of room for opinion and perpetuated false information (which I try to avoid repeating, but not always successfully).
Jurgen as a variant on George? OK. So, of course, is Jorge (pronounced HORE-hay), from Spanish. It was simply a name that occurred to me as a J- name that didn’t fit the Biblical + Classical groups, to say “and, yeah, there are a bunch of other miscellaneous origins, too.”