(host) What was Jesus' real name?

Jesus' name in Hebrew was Yeshua, so how did we get the name "Jesus"?

And is "Christ" actually a last name?

Perhaps the most well-known name in the entire world, Jesus Christ, is the name of the messiah of the Christian faith.

And that name has become pretty widespread, regardless of your personal beliefs.

But there's something unusual about the name "Jesus," since in the original copies of the Bible, his Hebrew name is actually written as Yeshua, which more closely aligns to the English name, Joshua.

So, where did this translation come from?

Well, this is a relatively compact history that has to do with things altering as some words became lost in translation.

So, let's start off with our first question, which is: What language was the New Testament originally written in?

Well, it wasn't written in English or Hebrew, but rather Greek.

But notice how my question centered on the New Testament and not the whole Bible.

That's because the Old Testament, or the books of the first half of the Bible, were written originally in Hebrew and Aramaic, but the latter half of the Bible, or the New Testament, was written in Greek.

So, this leads us to our next question: How did Yeshua become translated to Jesus?

In the text, "A Greek-English Lexicon," compiled in the 19th century by Henry George Liddell, Robert Scott, and others, "Yeshua" was translated into ancient Greek as "Iesus."

And that's because the original authors of the New Testament were trying to convert the sound of the Hebrew name into Greek letters.

But since they didn't have the letters or spelling to represent the "shh" sound in their language, they substituted an "S" sound in the middle, and that led them to "Iesus."

Even though there were other men with the first name Yeshua in the Bible in the Old Testament, and also men with the same name who were contemporaries of Jesus, their names were written in Hebrew and thus stuck closer to the "Joshua" translation once their names were converted into English.

But it took a while for the "Jay" sound to be placed in front of "Iesus."

It wasn't until 16th century English translations of the Bible that Iesus was spelled as "Jesus."

So the men named Yeshua in the Old Testament became "Joshuas," and the Yeshua of the New Testament was transliterated to "Jesus."

And the distinction of translation versus transliteration here is key.

Translation is the act of changing a word from one language to its equivalent in another language, like book in English becoming "libro" in Spanish.

But transliteration is the conversion of letters and sounds from one alphabet to another.

For example, Greek has the letter phi, but that letter isn't a part of the alphabet in English, so it's phonetically transliterated "phi."

But that brings us to our third and final question: How did Christians arrive at the full title, "Jesus Christ"?

Well, according to an op-ed piece in "Newsday" written by Rabbi Marc Gellman, Hebrew naming practices don't favor last names, but rather take the form that demonstrates parental connections to a father or mother.

Gellman notes: "A Jewish name is your first name in Hebrew, followed by a connecting word, "ben" which means "son of," if you are a male, or "bat," which means "daughter of" if you are female.

These connecting words are followed by the first name in Hebrew of your father, and in some cases, also the first name of your mother.

He goes on to write that, in some cases, your place of birth or origin could also be added to the end of your name in Hebrew to help distinguish between people with the same name from different places.

But in the Christian faith, Jesus is noted as the son of Mary and God, so the traditional naming of Jesus, Son of Joseph-- Mary's husband in the Bible-- wouldn't be fitting.

Instead, during his lifetime, he was known as Jesus of Nazareth, drawing the second half of his name from where he was from and not from either parent.

The "Christ" portion of his name isn't a last name at all, but a word translated which means "the Messiah," or "God's Anointed One," who was prophesized and foretold about in the Jewish faith.

So, Christ, in this case, functions more like a title, as in "Jesus, the Anointed One," or "Jesus, the Messiah," rather than his last name.

So, how does it all add up?

In the case of the name "Joshua," the name went directly from Hebrew to English, but in the case of the name "Jesus," it traveled a more winding linguistic trajectory from Greek spellings to English, and it probably is because contemporary English naming practices follow a strict form of first name, then last name, like Danielle Bainbridge or John Doe, that a lot of us who speak English get a bit mixed up by thinking "Christ" is a last name instead of a title.

So, what do you think?

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