Why The 12 Disciples have English names

Admin Wed 04 Jan 2023, 12:51 pm

Why did the 12 disciples have English names?
https://www.quora.com/Why-did-the-12-disciples-have-English-names
Quora
Martijn Vos
Christian; Dutch reformed protestant Author has 888 answers and 1.9M answer views4y
Of course the disciples didn’t have English names, but English-speakers use the English forms of their names because that is easier. In other languages, we use different forms of their names, and often forms that are closer to the original.

Peter, for example, is called Petrus in Dutch and German, which is closer to the Greek form: Petros. John is Ioannes in Greek, and Johannes in Dutch or German.

I’ll try to list as many of the English forms together with the original Greek and sometimes even more original Aramaic, which is what Jesus and his disciples most likely spoke.

Simon Peter: Simon Petros (Greek), Shimon Kephas (Aramaic); petros and kephas both mean “stone”; shimon means “he has heard”
Andrew: Andreas (Greek, from andreios - “manly”)
James: Iakobos (Greek), Ya'aqov (Hebrew), or Jacob, the same name as Jacob Israel, the father of the 12 tribes of Israel.
John: Ioannes (Greek), Yochanan (Hebrew) meaning “Yahweh is gracious”
Philip: Philippos (Greek) meaning “lover of horses”
Bartholomew: Bartholomaios (Greek), Bartalmai (Aramaic) meaning “son of Talmai”.
Matthew: Matthaios (Greek), Mattityahu (Hebrew) meaning “gift of Yahweh”
Thomas: Thomas (Greek), Ta'oma' (Aramaic) meaning “twin”
Jude/Judas: Ioudas (Greek), Yehuda (Hebrew) meaning “praised”
(I used Latin transcriptions for Greek, Aramaic and Hebrew to keep this answer readable. More accurate would be to use the Greek and Hebrew alphabet, but people who can read that probably already knew this.)

Dick Harfield

Lives in Sydney, AustraliaAuthor has 26.2K answers and 75.1M answer views4y

Surprisingly, several of the names we find in the gospels were Greek, not Aramaic or Hebrew, but of course they were not English.

Simon could have been either a Greek name or an Aramaic name.

The author of 2 Peter inadvertently identified himself by the Hebrew name Simeon, which the real Simon Peter would never have done.

Andrew was a Greek name. Since he was the brother of Simon, you would think they were Greek, but they were otherwise portrayed as Hebrew.

Philip was a Greek name.

Thomas is a Greek transliteration of the Aramaic word for ‘Twin’.

Bartholomew was not an actual name, because it merely identifies this anonymous disciple’s father. It is apparently a partial transliteration of the Aramaic, ‘Son of Tolmai’ or ‘Son of Talmai’.

The English language has simply adopted from the gospels, some of the names of disciples.

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How did Jesus find people named Andrew, Peter, Simon, Matthew, James, Philip, Thomas and John, in the Middle East?
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Originally Answered: How did Jesus find people named Andrew, Peter, Simon, Matthew, James, Phillip, Thomas and John, in the Middle East?

[ltr]He didn't. He found people named Andreas, Shimon, Shimon, Mattityahu, Yaqov, Filippos, Tauma, and Yochanan, or something close to those. As Hellenized Jews their names would have originally been in either Greek (Andrew and Phillip) or Aramaic. Peter's name was also changed from Simon (Shimon) by Jesus, who by the way would not have been called Jesus, which is an Anglicization of a Latinization of his Aramaic name, either Yeshua or Yehoushua, which is translated in the Old Testament as Joshua[/ltr]
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