so the answer is no, you do not across the language family.
of course IndoEuropean languages does not equal Western european.
It remains a supposition that is not with great evidence. random googling is not evidence.
Because americans post to ask about this a lot. There is a collison of culture that provokes this it is clear.
It isn’t like that. There are two names for Jesus in Arabic: ‘Isa, used by Muslims and Yasu‘ used by Christians. Yasu‘ is derived from the Aramaic or Syriac form of the name, while ‘Isa is an Arabicized form that scholars have never been able to explain. The letter ‘ayn and the letter ya’ trade places at the beginning and end, which is not true of anything else in Arabic or anyplace else.
In my three decades of Arabic studies, I have never once heard of anyone ever named Yasu‘, while there are lots of people named ‘Isa (which has only one s).
The answer is yes, because minimal googling was all it took to obtain adequate information. And please look up the words “minimal” and “random”. They are not synonyms.
Wiki has a pretty good article which includes most modern IE languages:
I have never heard it asked once outside this thread in over 50 years living in America. How many times have you heard it outside this thread, and how much time have you spent in America?
Thank you for the informative post. We could use several more like it around here.
May we infer that Arab Christians are never named “Isa”?
Actually, Joshua and Jesus are the same name, just filtered through different languages. There are other examples of that phenomenon in English - why in the Anglo world do we have people named John, Sean, and Ian and occasionally encounter a Hans or an Ivan? What is the difference between Ann, Anne, Anna, and Hannah?
In essence, there’s nothing wrong linguistically with referring to “Jesus Christ, son of Mary” as “Joshua the Messiah, son of Miriam” or “Yeshua the Anointed One, son of Maureen”. The fact that it is not done is primarily cultural momentum.
Now, a joke.
Q: How do we know that Jesus was Puerto Rican?
A: His name was Jesus!
“Never” is probably too strong a word. It’s like asking whether there are any Jewish people named Takeshi or Buddhists named Solomon. There probably aren’t that many, but there could certainly be a few converts who didn’t change their name, or people from mixed ethnic backgrounds who get their name from dad and their religion from mom or something like that.
Ramira, I take issue with your accusation. I’ve taken pains to explain my reasoning for being interested in the question, and I’ve done the research in the four languages besides English and Spanish that I can use to make a contribution. There is no doubt that cultural tension exists in parts of America between anglophones and hispanophones, but it is neither kind nor fair to presume this thread arises from that issue. If anything, reasonable discussion of cultural differences in appropriate language brings cross-cultural understanding and ought to be encouraged.
For this question, here’s a Spanish site that agrees with this thread. It’s not at all authoritative, but I’m posting it because it suggests the phenomenon is post-medieval:
(http://www.sellamara.com/nombre/jesus#.VQb1CY7F-So) “Este nombre no fue frecuente en España, en época medieval, al considerarse irreverente utilizar el nombre de Jesús. Posteriormente comenzó a utilizarse, normalmente en forma compuesta , tanto para hombre como mujer: Jesús María, Antonio Jesús, Pedro Jesús, María Jesús, etc.”
(This name was not frequent in Spain in the medieval period, as it was considered irreverent to use the name of Jesus. Later on, it began to be used, normally in compound form, as much for a man as for a woman: Jesús María, Antonio Jesús, Pedro Jesús, Marís Jesús, etc.)
“Never” may be close enough to the truth to be not worth haggling over.
And I think the word may also be reasonably applied to Muslim to Christian conversion in Islamic countries.
And here is yet another “never” for you: children of Christian parents named Mohammed!
I think the scope of interaction is different. The US is 17 percent Hispanic, much more than the UK or Ireland, and from this thread it sounds like the name “Jesus” is much more common among the Spanish-speaking population in the US than in Europe. We may be the country that has the broadest opportunity for people whose subculture does not use “Jesus” as a given name to meet people who are so named. I’m not saying it never happens elsewhere, only that it may be much more frequent here.
Can you identify any common religious background among people who are actively critical of using “Jesus” as a given name? Among the mild-mannered mainstream Protestant churches, naming a child Jesus is clearly Not Done, but any explanation for the taboo is lost in time (hence the question). I suppose some people might have a vague sense that it is somehow inappropriate, but it’s not something that the churches actively discourage or warn against as blasphemy. As far as I know, non-Hispanic people here who name their child “Emmanuel” or “Joshua” aren’t thinking that they would prefer “Jesus” but that those other names are as close as society lets them get; it’s more that the use of “Jesus” never crosses their minds. Among irreligious/atheist Americans, I think the concern would be that the name would make the family sound too devout, not blasphemous.
To the extent you’re able to tell, does the criticism tend to arise from more evangelical Protestants? From Catholics? This is just another aspect of the question that is educational to me: Americans may be the most curious about the difference, but I think most of us are conversely unaware that some people are actually critical of those who do use the name. I’ve never heard any criticism of Hispanic culture on this point, so it’s interesting to try to learn where that comes from.
The freakout ones are Protestants, sometimes but not always from microchurches. They view it as “taking the Lord’s name in vain” but, without understanding that you guys view Emmanuel as a sort of “nickname” rather than as another version of Jesus, getting that kind of criticism for people who actually used Emmanuel was completely incomprehensible to me.
That definition of “using the word Jesus in any fashion other than when reading from the Bible or preacing” = “taking the Lord’s name in vain”, along with not wanting to use “Catholic names”, are part of the reasons Evangelic Hispanics are preferring Emmanuel and Yoshua/Joshua* over Manuel or Jesús; sometimes devoutly, sometimes not so much.
Pos. Name …Amount… Avg. Age
1 ANTONIO…739,523 53.6
2 JOSE …672,826 59.2
3 MANUEL…638,001 53.2
4 FRANCISCO…550,394 55.1
5 JUAN …381,245 54.3
6 DAVID…356,516 27.0
7 JOSE ANTONIO.319,396 45.7
8 JOSE LUIS…307,045 49.4
9 JAVIER…300,699 29.6
10 JESUS…290,359 46.0
The ladies have María Jesús in position 21, with 143486 of them.
By the way, how does one force tables? And my apologies for the lousy alignments.
Just as a point of curiosity, the website NotAlwaysWorking.com (which mostly features of silly or stupid retail employees, with a very pronounced Anglophone emphasis) today features a picture of a store receipt from Walgreens; the “joke” or main point is that the receipt says, “I’m Jesus. Thank you for allowing me to serve you today.” It’s apparently hilariously funny that the employee is named Jesus.
Please. I am sorry but you are a librarian and academic who has very theoretical opinions - very scientific but very abstract and theoretical academic. Like the pretended correction of only one S in Issa although in our real usage in roman characters it is most typically two S. Your comments always show you are a theoretical academic and please do not correct real usage.
In my forty years of life I am not 100% sure about the use of Iasau3 versus 3ssa.
I think it may be true - even it is likely true - but there is not clarity as in my real experience not in academic the usage that the orthodox and some others but never the maronites use the muslim versions of some names for social reasons.
???
Accusation? I did not make any accusation?? What are you saying is an accucastion and of what??
My only observation is that the idea
the answer is that you have some reaction, because random internet searching is not a research, despite the attitude presented.
I know what these words are in English, but the pretension of difference is false.
That you have used IE to mean W. European is not surprising. it is a myopia.
The only thing I maintain from an outside observer point of view is that this question comes up often in the american context - I have never seen it elsewhere - and it seems always made on a asserted basis.
It is not clear if the assumptions are true.
Your posts betray a degree of literacy inadequate for carrying on sophisticated conversation in English. I notice this is the case despite 15 years membership on this board, so further improvement is unlikely. I suggest you retire from written participation, and confine yourself to the role of spectator.
No, I did not.
Can you give us some examples of you yourself seeing it outside this thread?
Be specific. Something like this, please:
The only time in my life outside this thread that I ever experienced a conversation about the Hispanic name Jesus was one I had with my mother in the 1960s regarding the baseball player Jesus Alou, mentioned upthread. I recall pronouncing the name as it is pronounced in English, and she corrected me with the Spanish pronunciation. That was 50 years ago.
What exactly is an asserted basis, and what exactly is being made on such a basis?
You would probably say so even if someone were to count every person named Jesus in every IE language.
To avoid misunderstanding, the doubled “ss” is only a spelling convention based on French, because a rule in French is a single s between vowels has to be pronounced [z], so to represent [s], they have to write it double. That’s true of only French and German. Sometimes also Italian and English, though not necessarily. E.g. “basis” or “house” where the single /s/ remains unvoiced between vowels.
My point was that the letter sin in ‘Isa has no shaddah (consonant doubling) in Arabic. In the “real usage” you speak of. As for transliteration, that depends on varying cultural factors in “real usage” and has a more or less loose relationship to the actual sounds.
There are two different Arabic names, حسن Ḥasan and حسّان Ḥassān. Different, though related. The latter has a shaddah so it’s pronounced and spelled with doubled s. The former usually gets romanized with a doubled s too even though it isn’t pronounced that way, so when both are written “Hassan” no one can tell the difference any more.
Moderator Note
This sounds an awful lot like a personal insult. If you have a problem with a poster, take it to the pit. General Questions is not the forum for this type of post.
n.m.
Thank you again for an interesting, informative post.
I would add in your defense that your contributions to this thread are not theoretical, but are, rather, empirical.
I really only realized how “strange” my name might be when I got to college. And there it was mostly the professors who were astounded by it.
Your name is Jesus?
Anything you can tell us about where and when you went to college and about how the professors expressed astonishment? (I would have expected the professors to express no astonishment.)