FWIW, France – two Jeans (one in 1316 and another between 1350-1364)
Germany – no kings or emperors named anything like John (none of the Holy Roman Emperors either)
Spain – four King Juans, two of Castille and two of Aragon (in addition to the present Juan Carlos)
John de Baliol was also King of Scotland (1249-1315).
In addition, there have been six kings of Portugal called João, a Grand Duke of Jean Luxembourg, two kings of Sweden called Johan (plus one more called Hans and a Karl Johan), a king Hans of Denmark, two king Johns of Poland, five king Istvans of Hungary, five tsar Ivans of Russia…
Isn’t this just a selection effect? I mean, something’s got to be most popular. If it happened to be Bartholemew, then the OP would be asking “Why Bart?”. It’s like rolling a die and then asking why four came up. If the question is just why there’s such a popular name at all, there’s a negative feedback. Once a name gets just a little bit more popular, by random chance, there are that many more people named that. And then, that means that more kids get named after the first generation. Then, those kids grow up, and get people named after them, too, and so on.
I always thought it had something to do with the Catholic Church. Being a Protestant myself, I don’t know this for fact, but I was told that Catholics are supposed to name their children after saints. And with the preponderance of Pope John’s, it shouldn’t be surprising that Saint John would be a popular namesake.
And that Irish name, Seán, is as much a “corruption” as Shawn is (although to be pedantic it’s actually a “corruption” of the Norman Jehan/ Jean rather than of John). Personally I think it’s better not to use such loaded terms.
FWIW the older more traditional Irish name for John is Eoin.
Yeah, Eoin was on my list earlier.
Phase42’s suggestion might be right to a degree. There’s no hard and fast rule about using saints’ names (at least not these days) but it’s certainly very common. John has also been used by more popes than any other name, for whatever reason, and although some other papal names are a bit, well, peculiar, John isn’t much of a burden to give a child. I have a cousin who was named after Pope John XXIII.
That doesn’t explain the prevalence of John in non-Catholic societies, but saints’ names have been popular throughout Europe as have family names everywhere.
István is Hungarian for Stephen.
The Hungarian form of John is János.
I’d like to know the source of ‘John’ being the most populous name in the Western World.
John, being from the bible, is also a Hebrew, and thus, a non-Western name (if you consider near-East being non-Western). So this would increase its popularity world wide.
As mentioned, don’t confuse the most popular baby name given in a particular year for being most popular over all.
I can’t find a cite right now, but I believe ‘Michael’ is the most popular male name in the U.S. right now, over all. And if you go into the Western World, it’s popular in most Western countries (Micheal, G.; Michele, Fr.; Miguel, Sp., etc…).
Biblical names are the most popular names in Western culture, because of the considerable influence of the Bible. Biblical names that are most popular tend to come from the most popular characters (etc., Mary, Peter), the shortest names (John v. Jehosaphat), and names from both Testaments (e.g., Joseph or Michael).
Peace,
moriah <---- a biblical name!
What I want to know is; what kind of jerk names their kid “John” if their last name is Smith?