What was Jesus’s real name?

His name in his own language

The English word would have meant nothing in Nazareth. His family spoke Aramaic, heard Scripture in Hebrew and called him Yeshua. Luke says the baby was named on the eighth day, at his circumcision, with the name the angel had given before he was conceived (Luke 2:21). Matthew explains why the name fits.

She shall give birth to a son. You shall name him Jesus, for it is he who shall save his people from their sins.

The wordplay only works in Hebrew. Yeshua is a short form of Yehoshua, which joins a short form of God’s name, Yah or Yeho, to the root of the verb “to save.” It is usually translated “Yahweh saves” or “Yahweh is salvation.”

The same name as Joshua

Jesus and Joshua are one name in two spellings. Joshua, the man who led Israel into Canaan after Moses, was born Hoshea, and Moses renamed him.

Moses called Hoshea the son of Nun Joshua.

After the exile the short form took over. In the Hebrew of Nehemiah 8:17, Joshua son of Nun is called Yeshua, and the high priest who rebuilds the altar in Ezra 3:2 is Yeshua son of Jozadak, spelled Jeshua in most English Bibles. The Septuagint, the Greek translation of the Hebrew Bible, wrote Joshua’s name Iēsous, exactly as the Gospels write Jesus. So where the Letter to the Hebrews mentions Joshua, the Greek says Iēsous, and the King James Version (1611) translated it straight: “For if Jesus had given them rest” (Hebrews 4:8). Modern versions print Joshua.

A common name, so a second name

Yeshua was one of the commonest names among Jews of the time. The historian Josephus mentions about twenty different men called Jesus. One was a high priest, Jesus son of Damneus (Antiquities 20.203). Another, Jesus son of Ananus, a farmer, walked Jerusalem’s streets for years crying woe on the city before the war with Rome (Jewish War 6.300–309). Paul had a co-worker named “Jesus who is called Justus” (Colossians 4:11), and some early copies of Matthew 27:16–17 call the prisoner Barabbas “Jesus Barabbas.”

So people added a label. Philip tells Nathanael they have found “Jesus of Nazareth, the son of Joseph” (John 1:45). Josephus, writing around AD 93, has to tell his Jesuses apart too: he identifies James as the brother of the Jesus who was called Christ (Antiquities 20.200).

Christ is a title

“Christ” comes from the Greek Christos, “anointed,” a translation of the Hebrew mashiach, Messiah. John spells it out: “We have found the Messiah!” (which is, being interpreted, Christ) (John 1:41). When Peter says “You are the Christ” (Matthew 16:16), he is naming a role, Israel’s promised king, not a family. And Immanuel? Matthew quotes Isaiah, “They shall call his name Immanuel,” meaning “God with us” (Matthew 1:23), but nobody in the Gospels calls him that. Most readers take it as what the child means, not what his mother called him.

From Iēsous to Jesus

Greek had no “sh” sound, and Greek men’s names took a final -s, so Yeshua became Iēsous. Latin wrote Iesus. English said the name with the sound of “joy” for centuries before it changed the letter: the first King James Bible of 1611 still printed “Iesus,” and the J took over in later printings. Arabic-speaking Christians say Yasūʿ; the Quran calls him ʿĪsā. Every language has said the name its own way, and the Gospels, written in Greek, were the first to do it.