The name “Jesus” comes from a long chain of translations and sound shifts that started in ancient Hebrew and passed through Aramaic, Greek, Latin, and then into English.

Quick Scoop

  • The original Hebrew name behind “Jesus” is Yehoshua (later shortened to Yeshua), which means “Yahweh/Jehovah is salvation” or “the Lord saves.”
  • In Jesus’ time, in everyday speech, he would have been called Yeshua in Aramaic/Hebrew, not “Jesus.”
  • When the New Testament was written in Greek, Yeshua was rendered as Iēsous (Ἰησοῦς).
  • Latin writers took the Greek Iēsous and wrote it as Iesus.
  • In Middle English, this became Iesu , and as the letter “J” split off from “I” in the 1500s–1600s, the spelling and pronunciation shifted to Jesus in modern English.

Mini timeline of the name

  1. Biblical Hebrew : Yehoshua (יְהוֹשֻׁעַ) → “Yahweh is salvation.”
  1. Later Hebrew / Aramaic : Yeshua (יֵשׁוּעַ) – common Jewish name in the Second Temple period.
  1. Greek (New Testament) : Iēsous (Ἰησοῦς) – adapted to Greek sounds and grammar.
  1. Latin : Iesus – the standard form in the Latin Bible.
  1. Middle English : Iesu → influenced by the Great Vowel Shift and the new letter “J.”
  1. Modern English : Jesus – the form we use today.

So when you ask “where did the name Jesus come from,” the short answer is: it is the English descendant of the Hebrew Yeshua/Yehoshua , meaning “the Lord saves,” that traveled through Greek Iēsous and Latin Iesus before it looked and sounded like Jesus to us.

Information gathered from public forums or data available on the internet and portrayed here.