113
What is the most universal name?
(lemmy.dbzer0.com)
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
this post was submitted on 11 Sep 2023
113 points (93.1% liked)
Asklemmy
43394 readers
1197 users here now
A loosely moderated place to ask open-ended questions
If your post meets the following criteria, it's welcome here!
- Open-ended question
- Not offensive: at this point, we do not have the bandwidth to moderate overtly political discussions. Assume best intent and be excellent to each other.
- Not regarding using or support for Lemmy: context, see the list of support communities and tools for finding communities below
- Not ad nauseam inducing: please make sure it is a question that would be new to most members
- An actual topic of discussion
Looking for support?
Looking for a community?
- Lemmyverse: community search
- sub.rehab: maps old subreddits to fediverse options, marks official as such
- !lemmy411@lemmy.ca: a community for finding communities
~Icon~ ~by~ ~@Double_A@discuss.tchncs.de~
founded 5 years ago
MODERATORS
Hard to say. Like, do "Ivan", "Giovanni" and "John" count as the same, or different names? What about Latin "Amanda" (to be loved) vs. Japanese 愛/Ai (love)? How do we even count this?
Ivan, Giovanni, John, Jean, Shaun, Sean, Shane, Zane, Ian, Jan, Yves, Juan, Johannes, Yohan, and more...
The name means "gift". Pretty universal.
Everyone is saying it means "gift" but Wikipedia (as well as an embroidery my grandma gave me when I was young!) says it comes from Yohanan/Johanan יוֹחָנָן (Yôḥānān), which means "YHWH (Yahweh/God) is gracious", with gracious being used in the form of "merciful" or "forgiving".
Which can kind of mean the same thing but is also different enough. Johnathan, however, does mean "God has given".
TIL that John and Johnathan are not different versions of the same name!
Ironically, all the variations you mentioned do not have the gift part, except for the letter 'n' :)
They all originate from Johnathan, which in Hebrew means, literally "God gave", the "Joh" part meaning "God", and "Nathan" meaning "gave".
Wait, does that mean, Joe Biden is literally a God Emperor? Or does Joseph have other roots?
Origin: Diminutive of Joseph Meaning: "Jehovah increases"
Also same as "Nathan" "El" or "Nathaniel"
is Bogdan another cognate, then? from the same root?
Though Bogdan does mean god given, the roots are Slavic.
Despite how many forms it takes, it isn't very common in the muslim world or asia which make up for a vast proportion of the world. So many of the names variations are within Europe.
I'm sure "gift" as a name is popular in those regions, too, even if it doesn't stem from the same root.
Theodore, Mateo, matthew, jonathan, jesse, gia, Anjali, Doris. Theres like 30 more, I didnt notice a super common asian name, anjali is fairly common in india. But yeah name meaning gift is probably up there.
John the Baptist is considered a prophet also in Islam, so local variations of the name John are not so infrequent in Muslim countries, at least according to Wikipedia, see Yahya.
Also yahya in arabic
يحيى
[X] Shaaauuuuuun!
Names with the same meaning is an interesting one. Id say that counts, I hadnt even thought about that!
I'd also allow variations of the name, John is Yuhanna in arabic.
I don't know the answer, but at least this gives us some way to actually count this:
There'll be a tiny bit of error there, but given that you're focusing only on the most common name, I guess that it's fine.
I wonder if there's some previous research on that. Digging further yielded nothing for me. (You got me curious, too.)
Yeah that sounds like a very reasonable approach. Ofc I'm not gonna do it lol.