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What is the most universal name?
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this post was submitted on 11 Sep 2023
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Asklemmy
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Hard to say. Like, do "Ivan", "Giovanni" and "John" count as the same, or different names? What about Latin "Amanda" (to be loved) vs. Japanese 愛/Ai (love)? How do we even count this?
Ivan, Giovanni, John, Jean, Shaun, Sean, Shane, Zane, Ian, Jan, Yves, Juan, Johannes, Yohan, and more...
The name means "gift". Pretty universal.
Everyone is saying it means "gift" but Wikipedia (as well as an embroidery my grandma gave me when I was young!) says it comes from Yohanan/Johanan יוֹחָנָן (Yôḥānān), which means "YHWH (Yahweh/God) is gracious", with gracious being used in the form of "merciful" or "forgiving".
Which can kind of mean the same thing but is also different enough. Johnathan, however, does mean "God has given".
TIL that John and Johnathan are not different versions of the same name!
Ironically, all the variations you mentioned do not have the gift part, except for the letter 'n' :)
They all originate from Johnathan, which in Hebrew means, literally "God gave", the "Joh" part meaning "God", and "Nathan" meaning "gave".
Wait, does that mean, Joe Biden is literally a God Emperor? Or does Joseph have other roots?
Origin: Diminutive of Joseph Meaning: "Jehovah increases"
Also same as "Nathan" "El" or "Nathaniel"
is Bogdan another cognate, then? from the same root?
Though Bogdan does mean god given, the roots are Slavic.
Despite how many forms it takes, it isn't very common in the muslim world or asia which make up for a vast proportion of the world. So many of the names variations are within Europe.
I'm sure "gift" as a name is popular in those regions, too, even if it doesn't stem from the same root.
Theodore, Mateo, matthew, jonathan, jesse, gia, Anjali, Doris. Theres like 30 more, I didnt notice a super common asian name, anjali is fairly common in india. But yeah name meaning gift is probably up there.
John the Baptist is considered a prophet also in Islam, so local variations of the name John are not so infrequent in Muslim countries, at least according to Wikipedia, see Yahya.
Also yahya in arabic
يحيى
[X] Shaaauuuuuun!
Names with the same meaning is an interesting one. Id say that counts, I hadnt even thought about that!
I'd also allow variations of the name, John is Yuhanna in arabic.
I don't know the answer, but at least this gives us some way to actually count this:
There'll be a tiny bit of error there, but given that you're focusing only on the most common name, I guess that it's fine.
I wonder if there's some previous research on that. Digging further yielded nothing for me. (You got me curious, too.)
Yeah that sounds like a very reasonable approach. Ofc I'm not gonna do it lol.