I can understand if there is some sort of taboo amongst Christians against naming a child “Jesus.”…lack of respect for the original, taking the name in vain, etc. And in fact I don’t see any Christians named “Jesus”…
…except amongst Spanish or Hispanic folks. Why do they seem to have no problem doing this while other Christians do? Seems to me most of them are mainstream Catholic, not some regional church like the Anglicans or the various flavors of Eastern Orthodox, so it really baffles me why this is a practice that seems to be divided along geographical/linguistic lines and not along religious ones.
Taboo? I dunno, of course, but my neighbors the Johnsons have named their teenage son “Jesus Christ”… 'cause I always hear his mother yelling at him, “Jesus Christ, can’t you keep your room clean?”
Sorry, I can’t answer the OP, though I’ve often wondered about that myself. “Jésus” as a given name would be unheard of in european french-speaking countries also.
Is the first name “Yeshua” still used amongst hebrew speakers? Are there any Old Testament names (except of course Yahweh) that are considered too “holy” to be used for your child?
Well, Yehoshua, hebrew for Joshua, is in common use. “Yeshua” might have been a Roman-era variation of that, although the few Jewish religious texts which mention him by name call him “Yeshu” rather than “Yehoshua”
Not that I know of. I mean, I’ve known people named Adam, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Moses, Aaron, Joshua, Samuel, David, Elijah…I can’t think of any Biblical name that had been associated with a good human being (as opposed to, say, Esau) that is considered off-limits for use.
CKDextHavn:
Come on, can’t you at least give Bill Cosby the credit he deserves for that line?
What about the parents of CIA counter-intelligence head James Jesus Angleton? I don’t think he had any Hispanic background.
In Spanish, “The Lord” is (pardon my lack of diacritics) “El Senor” (here’s the ~). Same as calling somebody “Mister”.
It’s hard to understand another language’s naming conventions unless you were brought up or fully immersed in the language. I think that Spanish speakers just think of the name “Jesus” for people and the name “Jesus” for the religious figure as two separate entities and don’t have any trouble distinguishing between the two.
WAG, Piety, i.e., Catholic Piety, is considered a big plus in one’s personal behavior. Religious piety includes honoring Jesus, Mary, Joseph, etc. by naming places, churches, cities, people after them. To name your son Jesus, Mary (Maria), Joseph (Jose), even The Cross ( for example, Cruz Maria), are symbols that you exalt the name of Jesus and of the Catholic name by naming that which is the most precious to you: son or daughter. By the way, when I came to the US in 1980 in my early teens, I was surprised as heck that Protestants did NOT name their children Jesus or Mary and that they considered that blasphemy! Ye Gads! I thought naming your children Jesus or Mary the most logical and natural. Finally, let me add that at least in Mexican culture is common to name children by honoring them after religious figures(Jesus, Mary, etc.), historical figures (I knew a kid named Mao), or soap operas characters.
A reference book I read pointed out that it was unusual for English speakers to use the name Jesus, but it not unusual for Arabic speakers to use Mohammed (or some variation).
I would think that Jesus and Mohammed would be equivalent levels of “sacredness” or however you want to describe it.
Catholics hold Mary in high esteem and it is one of the most popular names among Catholics of all nationalities.
Well, Muslims consider Mohammed to be a prophet, but they don’t consider him to be God. A Muslim naming his kid Mohammed would be more like a Jew naming his kid Moses, which is not unheard of. (Or a Christian naming his kid Paul–which is quite common). Since Christians consider Jesus to be God Incarnate, the equivalent for a Muslim would be naming their son “Allah”…except that that whole “incarnation” thing kind of alters how Christians and Muslims look at such things. According to Christians, Jesus was both completely God and fully human, and there’s no real equivalent to that sort of attitude in Islam or Judaism. As far as I know, no Christian ethnic group is in the habit of naming kids “Jehovah” or anything like that.
And the name Christopher means “Christ-bearer”. It comes from one of the apocryphal stories about Jesus, where a stranger carries Him across a river. Since the stranger wasn’t named in the original story, he was given a name based on his actions (another example being the woman who wiped His face on the way to the Cross: Veronica, meaning “True image”, because it’s said that a perfect image of His face was left on the cloth). So, a person named Christopher isn’t named after Jesus directly, but after a person assosciated with Jesus.
I have met Anglo-Saxon Christians named Joshua, but I’m not sure whether they were named after J. C. or the Old Testament figure of the same name.
Muslims actually consider Jesus and Mohammed to be on close to equal footing (both were prophets, and Jesus is considered to be second only to Mohammed in that regard), but the Islamic view of Mohammed is not the same as the Christian view of Jesus (Son of God and God Himself).
I don’t think it’s a Catholic-Protestant thing. There are lots of Catholics in the U.S. of northern European background, and aside from possibly archaic variants like Joshua, the modern name Jesus is not given to children by these people. It seems to be on the cultural level of national background rather than religious.
Before a certain time, I believe, the name Mary was considered too sacred. Of course it then became VERY popular.
(It’s my middle name.)
One nice thing now, is that there aren’t as many little girls named Mary, so perhaps naming a daughter that won’t be as common.
And there ARE many different forms.
Re: Jesús (accent on the u; pronounced “Heh,SOOS” – NOT “HEY,zoos”)
As pointed out before, Spanish speakers will use these “holy” names as given names quite without any problem: Jesús, Cruz, Encarnación, Asunción even Virgen (referring to the BVM.) There is even the use of “María” as a middle name for males (José María Olazábal).
My hypothesis is that Spanish Christianity being a “borderland” culture (in close contact, sometimes coexistence and often conflict with Muslims and Jews from the 7th to 15th centuries) and after that a missionary one (in the Americas, the Pacific and Africa from the 1500s on), there was a desire of some to take on a very important holy name as a way of emphasizing their faith. Also, since the christening name is a way of calling upon the child the advocacy of the saint in question, who better than Da Man Himself?
Now, I must say this: there IS a difference we make when refferring to biblical Jesus vs. just any guy called Jesús. In Spanish, the formal name “Jesus Christ” is rendered as one single name: “Jesucristo”. You will NOT see any “Jesucristos” or “Cristos” in the birth registries in my hometown. So it does seem that as the language evolved the key holy bit came to be the “Cristo” (Christ–> Messiah --> the Anointed One) rather than the “Jesús.” And y’know what? to someone growing up within the culture, it actually feels kinda reassuring to be taught your Lord and Savior is a guy with a regular name.
BTW indirect reference to JC is not unknown in proper names in other languages: “Galileo”, for example, means “The Man from Gallilee.”
josé
i have a godson named joshua. in the eastern orthodox church
there are two gifts given to godchildren upon baptism, a cross and an ikon. as josh was baptised in an english speaking church i never gave his name a second thought, until it was time to find an ikon. sure you can find one of the more popular saints but just try to find a right. joshua son of nun. so off we go to find an ikonographer. i met one off the plane (app. they don’t use boats any more) from russia and started to ask him if he could write an ikon of… i had no clue what joshua was in russian. i’ve never met one. i’m stumbling around old testament names thinking okay, the j would go to an “i” sound there would be a vowel following… then i remembered jerico. that’s when the ikonographer and i had a break through…
turns out joshua and jesus are the same name in russian and church slavanic. no wonder i never met a joshua from russia. just to check i asked a russian friend who was jewish if they knew anyone from home who was named joshua. she asked me if i knew the name in russian. i told her. she was floored. it sure cleared up why it’s just not used in russia. major taboo on both sides.
we ended up getting josh’s ikon written in english. just sooooo much easier in english. no conf. on which joshua.
on the mary question, there are many saint marys to choose from for a patron saint. in the orthodox church you just pick one. i haven’t met anyone named theotokos or have her as a patron. although christopher would be darned close if you play loose with the semantics. christ bearer vs god bearer. boy vs girl.
Except for the last few posts, which I did not read, all seem to be coming at this from the same angle. I dont know much about Spanish Culture, but south-of-the-border religious culture is very unique, with patron saints replacing native spirits. It is steeped in glorious ritual that has many native influences. I can see them having a completely different motivation in naming kids Jesus.
It’s possible that Mary would also be considered “too holy” or blasphemous, except that there was at least one, and probably at least two, other women named Mary in the New Testament: Mary the Magdalene, and Mary, sister of Martha and Lazarus (sometimes considered to be the same person, and also the same as the prostitute that Jesus saves from being stoned, but there’s no Biblical reason to say that).
There’s also at least two other "Joshua"s in the Bible, one of whom went by the Greek form “Jesus”, but they’re back in the Old Testament, so most Christians don’t notice them.