Expert: John A. Tvedtnes - 5/6/2004

Question
Hello John Tvedtnes.  I'd like to know why the names of people
in the new testament sound English:  John, Mark, Luke, Joseph,
Mary, etc...Are these translations?

Thanks.
Melanie

Answer
The question is more complex than your answer suggests.  The names John, Joseph, and Mary, all have a Hebrew origin, which is to be expected, since they were Jews.  The others, Mark and Luke, are Latin--also understandable since the Romans then ruled the Mediterranean world and much of Europe.

Here are the Hebrew equivalents of the three names listed:
John = YoHanan, "Yo [the Lord] is gracious"
Joseph = Yosef, "Ye will add" (see Genesis 30:24)
Mary = Miriam, if Hebrew, "exalted," but more likely an Egyptian borrowing from Mery-Amun, "beloved of Amun"

The J in Old English (as in most Germanic languages) was pronounced like Y, but that changed after the Norman conquest of England in 1066, when it became more like the French pronunciation of the letter J.  (You may know that, in Spanish, the J is really an H sound.)  In the name YoHanan, the H is not like our H, but is more like the CH in Scottish loCH.  Hebrew has a real H, too.  So part of the answer is that sounds that don't exist in the translation language cannot be represented.

Here are the Greek equivalents of the other two names:
Mark = Marcus
Luke = Lucius

The -US ending is a Latin masculine singular nominative case ending and hence useless in English, so it was dropped.