{"id":1171,"date":"2010-10-17T22:56:01","date_gmt":"2010-10-18T03:56:01","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/toddbolen.com\/2010\/10\/17\/jonathan-and-john\/"},"modified":"2010-10-17T22:56:01","modified_gmt":"2010-10-18T03:56:01","slug":"jonathan-and-john","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/toddbolen.com\/blog\/2010\/10\/17\/jonathan-and-john\/","title":{"rendered":"Jonathan and John"},"content":{"rendered":"

A friend wrote yesterday.  I will not name him.  But he was eager that our son be named Jack<\/em>.  We named our son Jonathan.  Our friend was happy with this because, he reasoned, Jonathan is like John, and Jack is a nickname for John.  So he plans to call our son Jack<\/em>.<\/p>\n

It is true that Jack is a nickname for John.  I don’t know why, but it is.  It’s also true (according to Wikipedia<\/a>) that John is the most popular name in the United States and Jack was the most popular name given to newborn boys in England and Wales every year from 1995 to 2005.<\/p>\n

It is not true, however, that Jonathan is like John.  Wikipedia gives me the most handy copy\/paste source.  This is what it says in the entry “John<\/a>,” under “Common mistakes”:<\/p>\n

\n

Because the name Jonathan<\/a><\/i> is sometimes abbreviated as Jon<\/i>, John<\/i> is sometimes incorrectly considered to be a short form of Jonathan<\/i>, especially in the United States. John<\/i> comes from the Hebrew name Y\u00c3\u00b4\u00e1\u00b8\u00a5\u00c4\u0081nn\u00c4\u0081n, whereas Jonathan<\/i> derives from the Hebrew \u00d7\u2122\u00d7\u2022\u00d6\u00b9\u00d7\u00a0\u00d6\u00b8\u00d7\u00aa\u00d6\u00b8\u00d7\u0178 Y\u00c3\u00b4n\u00c4\u0081\u00e1\u00b9\u00af\u00c4\u0081n, which means "Gift from the Lord" [tb edit: better: “the Lord [Yahweh] has given”] and thus is a longer version of Nathan<\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

If you know Hebrew, you don’t need this explanation, but at least one of my friends does.  Y\u00c3\u00b4\u00e1\u00b8\u00a5\u00c4\u0081nn\u00c4\u0081n (John) means “God is merciful” and it is not related to Jonathan.  Many of my heroes are named John.  My son is not one of them.<\/p>\n

\"101017601tb<\/a><\/p>\n

Jonathan.  More new photos here<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A friend wrote yesterday.  I will not name him.  But he was eager that our son be named Jack.  We named our son Jonathan.  Our friend was happy with this because, he reasoned, Jonathan is like John, and Jack is a nickname for John.  So he plans to call our son Jack. It is true\u2026 Read More »<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1171","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-family"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/toddbolen.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1171","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/toddbolen.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/toddbolen.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/toddbolen.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/toddbolen.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1171"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/toddbolen.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1171\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/toddbolen.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1171"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/toddbolen.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1171"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/toddbolen.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1171"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}