From Yeshua to Jesus: Recovering the Original Names of the Apostles

How Aramaic, Hebrew, and Greek shaped the earliest Christian names — and what is lost and found in translation.
When I was growing up in 1970s Catholic Ireland, our First Communion preparation was steeped in rhythm and repetition. We learned the “three prayers before” and the “three prayers after” Communion — short, heartfelt acts of faith, hope, and thanksgiving, recited in the half-whispered piety of school chapels. I remember them vividly still. There was a sense of order in those prayers, a linguistic and spiritual patterning that made the sacred familiar. In many ways, those childhood cadences shaped how I later came to think about language itself — how words, repeated and translated, form bridges between worlds.

That recollection resurfaced recently when I began to think again about the names that shaped the early Church. We so often take them for granted: Jesus, Peter, James, John. Yet every one of these names is the endpoint of a linguistic journey — translated, transliterated, softened and reshaped as Christianity moved from a small Semitic-speaking community in first-century Palestine to the Greek- and Latin-speaking world of the empire. In recovering the original forms of those names, we rediscover not only linguistic history but the deep humanity of early Christianity itself: multilingual, hybrid, and ever in translation.

The Name of Jesus: from Yehoshua to Yeshua to Iēsous
The name we say as Jesus has travelled an extraordinary path. Its root lies in the Hebrew Yehoshua (יְהוֹשֻׁעַ) — “Yahweh is salvation.” That name, familiar to readers of the Old Testament as Joshua, belonged to the successor of Moses who led the Israelites into the Promised Land. Over time, in the spoken Aramaic of Galilee, the name was shortened to Yeshua (יֵשׁוּעַ), the everyday form that Mary, Joseph, and his neighbours would have used.

When the Gospels were later written in Greek, Yeshua was rendered as Iēsous (Ἰησοῦς), since Greek lacked a “sh” sound and required a masculine ending. Latin writers then transliterated this as Iesus, which in turn became Jesus once the letter “J” emerged in late medieval English.

Thus, the name’s lineage runs:
Yehoshua → Yeshua → Iēsous → Iesus → Jesus.
When we say “Jesus,” we are therefore speaking an English descendant of an Aramaic name, itself rooted in Hebrew. Theologically, this connection is striking. Just as Joshua of the Old Testament led God’s people into the promised land, so Jesus of the New Testament leads humanity into salvation. The name itself encodes that continuity of purpose.

In daily life, though, there was nothing exotic about it. “Yeshua” was a common Galilean name. Mary would have called across the courtyard, “Yeshua, bar Yosef!” — “Jesus, son of Joseph!” To hear the name in its original language is to recover the ordinariness of the Incarnation: divinity spoken in the language of market stalls and village homes.

Names in a Multilingual World
The same linguistic complexity shapes the names of the Twelve Apostles. Galilee in the first century was a place of overlapping tongues — Aramaic in daily speech, Hebrew in Scripture and prayer, Greek in trade and administration, and some Latin in military and legal contexts.
As a result, many apostles bore both Semitic and Greek names, reflecting the bilingual world in which they lived. Andrew (Greek Andreas) and Philip (Greek Philippos, “lover of horses”) carry overtly Greek names, while others, such as Peter (Kefa, meaning “rock”), retain Semitic roots.

The following table offers an overview of the best-attested forms:
English NameOriginal (Aramaic / Hebrew)Meaning / Note
JesusYeshua (יֵשׁוּעַ)“God saves” — everyday Aramaic form of Yehoshua.
Peter
Kefa (כֵּיפָא)“Rock.” Greek Petros is a translation of Kefa.
AndrewAndreas (Greek)
“Manly.” A Hellenised name, possibly reflecting bilingual identity.
James (the Greater)
Ya‘aqov bar ZZebdi. Literally“Jacob, son of Zebedee.” “James” evolved from Iacobus → Jacome → James.
John
Yohanan (יוֹחָנָן)“God is gracious.” Common in both Hebrew and Aramaic.
PhilipPhilippos (Greek)“Lover of horses.”
Bartholomew
Bar-Talmai (בַּר-תַּלְמַי)“Son of Talmai.” Possibly the same person as Nathanael (Netan’el, “Gift of God”).
Thomas (Didymus)
Toma (תּוֹמָא)“Twin.” Greek Didymos means the same.
Matthew (Levi)
Mattai / Mattityahu“Gift of Yahweh.” Tax collector and evangelist.
James (the Less)
Ya‘aqov bar Halfai“Jacob, son of Alphaeus.” Distinguished by family line.
Thaddeus / Jude
Yehuda Taddai“Praise” or “thanksgiving.” Sometimes “Judas son of James.”
Simon the Zealot
Shim‘on ha-Qan‘an“Simon the Zealous.” From qan‘an (“zealous”), not “Canaanite.”
Judas Iscariot
Yehuda Ish Qeriyot“Judah, man of Kerioth.” His epithet identifies his hometown.

Two Judases, Not One
The repetition of the name Judas (from Yehuda, meaning “praise”) caused early confusion. There were, in fact, two men named Judas among the Twelve:

1. Judas Iscariot (Yehuda Ish Qeriyot) — “the man from Kerioth,” remembered for his betrayal of Jesus.
2. Judas, son of James (Yehuda bar Ya‘aqov) — also called Thaddeus or Lebbaeus in some Gospel lists. This second Judas is honoured as St Jude, patron of lost causes.

Both bore the same original name; only translation and emotional history separate Jude from Judas in English. The Greek form Ioudas applied to both. Later translators preferred to reserve “Jude” for the faithful apostle to avoid association with betrayal.
This is a clear example of how translation carries memory: the same name, differently rendered, encodes two moral trajectories.

Jesus and Joshua, James and Jacob
A similar confusion surrounds Jesus, Joshua, James, and Jacob.
As noted, Jesus derives from Yeshua / Yehoshua — the same name as Joshua, son of Nun. In English, we use “Joshua” for the Old Testament figure and “Jesus” for the New Testament figure, though the original names were identical.

Likewise, James is historically Jacob. The Hebrew Ya‘aqov became Greek Iakobos, then Latin Iacobus and finally “James” through French and English phonetic shifts. Thus, both James the Greater and James the Less were literally “Jacob, son of Zebedee” and “Jacob, son of Alphaeus.” Our English Bibles preserve a double translation: “Jacob” in the Old Testament, “James” in the New, though the name itself never changed.

These linguistic quirks remind us how deeply translation shapes theology. “Jesus” and “Joshua,” “James” and “Jacob” — all are linguistic cousins, their differences the product of history rather than meaning.

“Christ Jesus” or “Jesus Christ”?
Another subtlety arises with the title Christ.
“Christ” is not a surname but a title — the Greek Christos (Χριστός) meaning “Anointed One,” a direct translation of the Hebrew / Aramaic Mashiach / Mshiha (מְשִׁיחָא) — Messiah.
In Aramaic and Hebrew syntax, titles typically precede the personal name:
Mshiha Yeshua — “Messiah Jesus.”

When the early Church translated this into Greek, the order was often reversed to match Greek idiom: Iēsous Christos — “Jesus the Christ.”

Interestingly, Paul sometimes retained the Semitic order: Christos Iēsous — “Christ Jesus” — a phrasing that appears in several of his letters. This is more than stylistic preference. It reflects Paul’s theological emphasis: he speaks from the perspective of the risen Messiah revealed as Jesus, rather than the earthly Jesus later recognised as Messiah.

Both forms are valid, but “Christ Jesus” preserves the Aramaic pattern underlying Christian confession.

Paul: Apostle, But Not of the Twelve
Paul’s own name (Paulos, Latin Paulus, meaning “small” or “humble”) illustrates yet another dimension of linguistic transition. Born Saul of Tarsus (Sha’ul in Hebrew), he was both Jewish and Roman. After his conversion, he adopted his Roman name, Paulus, as he began to preach among Greek-speaking Gentiles.

He is frequently called “the Apostle Paul”, yet strictly speaking, he was not one of the Twelve. Those twelve were appointed directly by Jesus during His ministry, symbolising the twelve tribes of Israel. Paul, by contrast, was commissioned by the risen Christ on the road to Damascus.

He calls himself “an apostle not from men nor through man, but through Jesus Christ” (Galatians 1:1). Early Christians thus distinguished between the Twelve Apostles and apostles by vocation, such as Paul, Barnabas, and later Junia. The Greek title apostolos means “one who is sent.” In this broader sense, Paul’s apostleship is unquestioned — but he remains outside the symbolic Twelve.

Names as Carriers of Faith
To trace these linguistic paths is to rediscover how profoundly early Christianity was shaped by translation. The Gospel was born in Aramaic, written in Greek, canonised in Latin, and preached in the vernacular tongues of Europe. Each stage left traces on the words we still use.
To say Jesus Christ in English is to speak a phrase that has journeyed across four languages and two millennia. Behind it lies Yeshua Mshiha — the sound of first-century Galilee; then Iēsous Christos — the language of the Septuagint and Paul; and Iesus Christus — the Latin of Jerome and Augustine. Every layer testifies to faith translated, adapted, and handed on.

Language, like liturgy, never stands still. The prayers whispered before Communion in 1970s Ireland were already distant echoes of older tongues. Yet, just as those simple Irish devotions carried the essence of gratitude and awe, so too the translated names — Jesus, Peter, John — carry the living resonance of the originals.
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In recovering their proper forms — Yeshua, Kefa, Yohanan — we are reminded that faith is always embodied in human speech, local accents, and changing idioms. The divine Word, after all, became flesh and language.
Dr James M. Hatch
(c) 2025

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