[QuantumNomad_]

> is John Juan when he's in Mexico?

For the biblical Jesus, the situation is even worse. His name was probably originally יֵשׁוּעַ, and should therefore have been Yeshua to us users of the modern day Latin alphabet. But instead his name was adapted to Greek linguistic conventions as Ἰησοῦς (Iēsoûs), and from there transliterated into Jesus.

[chrismorgan]

James/Jacob is even messier! They come from the same name, but are in English treated as completely distinct names. In the New Testament Greek, you get Ἰακώβ (iakob) used for Old-Testament-era Jacobs (primarily the one later given the name Israel, but also the one in Matthew 1:15–16), and Ἰάκωβος (iakobus) used for New-Testament-era Jameses (two of Jesus’ disciples, and one of his brothers). English Bibles have ended up using Jacob for the old and James for the new ones, but not all languages maintain the distinction: in Telugu, for example, they’re all యాకోబు (yakobu).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_(given_name)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jacob_(name)

[jltsiren]

It's simpler than that. The Koine Greek transliteration became established long before that particular Jesus was born. It was a common name in a region that belonged to various Greek-speaking empires for centuries, at least nominally. The transliteration was based on the pronunciation used at the time, with a masculine suffix to make the name less awkward in Greek.

And then people wrote the texts that would become the New Testament in Greek, because it was the dominant language around the Eastern Mediterranean.

[bombcar]

It’s also something uniquely modern that we consider a person to have “one true and real name” - something completely unheard of until quite recently.

[tliltocatl]

> one true and real name

Egyptian mythology would like a word with you. Specially the part where Isis created a snake to bite Ra so that she could learn his true name. But yea, adapting names to foreign languages was a normal thing until recently.

[bombcar]

Fair enough, the societies and cultures that had one true real name were very adamant about letting no one know it, ever

[noduerme]

So is Joshua Jesus when he's in Mexico?

[dhosek]

Probably he’d be Josué. But in Greece, he’d be Ιησούς (Jesus). Beginning with the Vulgate¹, there was a distinction between the two names in Biblical texts that is carried over into most modern contexts (although I would note that Russian follows Greek in preferring then name Иисус (Jesus) for Joshua the prophet and I’m guessing that this in general follows the Catholic/Orthodox split (Croatian uses Jošua while Serbian Исус lending support to my hypothesis.²

⸻

1. Or maybe the Vetus Latina, I can’t claim enough authority over early Biblical translations to say with any certainty. And perhaps some other non-Western translation would have priority in making the Joshua/Jesus distinction.

2. My grand strategy for making these sorts of cross-lingual comparisons is to use the “other projects” links from Wikipedia which is also a great way of getting more accurate translations for somewhat niche terminology than machine translation or dictionaries can offer.

[bombcar]

Hey, Zeus!

[noduerme]

Don't forget, "Nobody messes with the Jesus"

[emmelaich]

Yep, a relative of mine, Joseph (Irish last name) became José when he was a Gaucho in Argentina.