The title pretty much says it all. Many cultures are Christian, but only the Spaniards and the Spanish-speaking people of the Americas use it as a first name. It can’t be a Catholic thing because many other countries are Catholic too and you never meet anyone named Jesus O’Flannery or Jesus Kowalski. So why?
Well, ‘Jesus’ is ‘Issa’ (or Essa if you prefer) in Arabic. It is a fairly common name.
Is “Jesus” a common name in European Spain? If not, then it could have something to do with the fact that Catholicism in the Americas have undergone heavy syncretism.
Either way, it’s interesting to note that in the New Testament, the pastoral epistles, at a minimum, were almost certainly written by someone other than Paul. It’s only Western thought that finds the prospect horrifying–back then the authors believed they were honoring Paul (and possibly Matthew & John) in assuming their identities.
D’oh! Paul in Saudi has it nailed. We do have a “Jesus” in our language… it’s Joshua.
I think Joshua is just Joshua. Like in the Old Testament Book of Joshua.
As Paul said, your premise is incorrect. I’ve met a couple of Malays named Isa (Jesus).
Haj
Actually, Jesus’ name as it was used by his contemporaries would have been Yeshua, or, as we say, Joshua. Yes, Joshua is Joshua. But the Greek cognate for Joshua is Jesus.
Hajario’s right. In Arabic it has only one s.
I asked this question on the boards a VERY long time ago. While I don’t recall ever getting an answer, one thing I can tell you: Jesus is not Joshua. Joshua in Hebrew is YeHOshua, whereas Jesus in Hebrew was Yeshua. And Joshua in Spanish is not Jesus…it’s Josue.
Don’t ask me for cites on this, it’s purely anecdotal. During the three years I lived in Spain, I don’t think I met a single Jesus - they exist of course, but it doesn’t seem common. Jose-Maria and Maria-Jose are very common though.
I was told that it used to be a law that parents could only name their kids after saints. With a limited amount of names to choose from, this explains why there are so many double names in Spanish (and maybe French, for that matter): Jose Ignatio, Juan Pablo, Rosa Maria ASF.
Any chance that the two names derive ultimately from a common source?
Doesn’t “Vladimir” translate to “prince of peace?”
Tricky, because the Russian word mir means both “world” and “peace” (“World peace” is translated as miru mir 
).
My understanding is that the Russian name Vladimir is a rough cognate to Old-French-derived Raymond, meaning “king of the world”.
Oh, come off it… let’s forget about not wanting Jesus’ name to be a common Hebrew one. It is “Joshua.” Yehoshua Bar-Yosef, to be exact. If there was some drift and he pronounced his name “Yeshua” rather than “Yehoshua” that’s really just splitting hairs. I don’t think that there can be any reasonable doubt that his parents fully intended to name their son after the Biblical warrior for whom the Book of Joshua was named.
(borderlond, I think that answers your question, too)
What seems to add to the confusion is that the mentions of Jesus are confined to the New Testament, which is in Greek rather than Hebrew or Aramaic or any other Semitic language. So the Hebrew/Aramaic names mentioned therein are filtered through Greek transliteration.
Wikipedia sez,
So yes, it looks as though the original Hebrew or Aramaic name represented by “Jesus” is at least related to the name represented by “Joshua”, but it’s not certain that Jesus was actually named Joshua, if you follow me.
As for the tradition of naming a (Christian) boy baby after Jesus: Are you only counting names that directly represent the name “Jesus”, such as Hispanic “Jesus” and Arabic “`Isa”, or would you also count other names that specifically signify Jesus to Christians, such as “Emmanuel”, “Christos” (“anointed one”), and “Salvatore” (“savior”)? In that case, there are a lot of other cultures that name kids after Jesus, not just Hispanic and Arab Christians.
The question I think the OP is asking, and the question I definitely want to ask, is why, in places where Jesus of Nazareth as mentioned in the New Testament is called “Jesus,” do people not use “Jesus” (NOT Joshua, etc. – Jesus) as a first name (with the exceptions noted in the OP)?
Could it be that the Iberian culture’s proximity to and rule under Muslims influenced this in the following way? Muhammad is the arguably most common name for male Muslims. Now Islam doesn’t hold Muhammad to be the 'son of God," but a mortal prophet. Yet, its possible that many Christians living alongside Muslims would wish to acknowledge their faith’s “founder” in a similar fashion to their Muslim neighbors.
This could also explain why “Christo” is a given name among Balkan Christians - peoples who also lived under Muslim domination for centuries.
By contrast, French, German, or British people did not have the same prolonged Muslim presence along their immediate frontiers - other than Jews, any of their non-Christian neighbors would have been polytheistic, and would not have shared many common names derived from a religious figure.
Let’s get this stright, because it’s a myth perpeptuated by Spanish revisionist history during a long and nationalistic time, and it’s spread to most other countries as well. The indigenous people of Spain (call them Spanish, Iberian or whatever) did not live alongside Muslims. They were Muslims. At least paying lip service. The Muslim rulers were a very small group of people who, having conquered a large part of the country, settled down. Your average Iberian peasant was officially a Muslim, because the rulers were Muslims. They quickly converted to Christianity after Los Reyes Catolicos conquered Granada and kicked Boabdil out of Alhambra (but not out of Spain, he got a fiefdom some 30 kms south of his old palace).
The nationalistic and very religious Spanish rulers since 1492 have always maintained that Los Moros were kicked out, because it doesn’t fit their national self image that most of them are descendants of “dirty infidels”.
Let’s not forget that Spain has been a Muslim country longer than it’s been Christian.
Except the Spanish Muslim rulers didn’t mandate conversion, and so there were large (and in most places, majority) Christian populations in Spain under Muslim rule. Uniformity in religion didn’t come to Spain until the Christian conquest, where the Christian rulers forced both Muslims and Jews to convert to Christianity (the Jews in 1492, the Muslims in the early 1500s).
Noone Special:
Don’t be silly. No Jew denies that Jesus was Jewish. No one will deny that his mother was Miriam, or his father (as it were) was Yosef, or that Paul was Shaul, all of which are common Hebrew names. The fact is that today’s “Hebrew Christians” or “Jews for Jesus”, fully aware that Jewish Joshuas the world over call themselves “Yehoshua” in Hebrew, refer to him as “Yeshua” not “Yehoshua.” And the Spanish form of the Hebrew “Yehoshua,” as my like clearly demonstrates, is “Josue” rather than “Jesus.”
It’s not a distinction of my making.