# The English name "Joshua"



## tFighterPilot

Something that recently crossed my mind, all English versions of Hebrew names went through Greek and Latin, neither of which had the the consonant [sh] which caused most Hebrew names containing שׁ to have this letter realized as [s] (Jerusalem, Solomon, Simon etc). How come the name Joshua does have it?


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## Kevin Beach

I suspect it's a coincidence. Sometimes in English, a sound that is meant to be *syu/zyu* is pronounced *shu/zhu*. Thus, tonsure becomes tonshure; pleasure becomes plezhure; sure becomes shure; etc. It isn't difficult to imagine that Josua would become Joshua, first in speech and then in writing. Maybe too it was influenced by a growing knowledge of Hebrew among scholars from the 18th century.


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## origumi

Kevin Beach said:


> I suspect it's a coincidence. Sometimes in English, a sound that is meant to be *syu/zyu* is pronounced *shu/zhu*. Thus, tonsure becomes tonshure; pleasure becomes plezhure; sure becomes shure; etc. It isn't difficult to imagine that Josua would become Joshua, first in speech and then in writing. Maybe too it was influenced by a growing knowledge of Hebrew among scholars from the 18th century.


Then why would it happen to Jo*sh*ua but not to *S*olomon (Heb. *Sh*lomo), I*s*aiah (Heb. Ye*sh*aayah), Mo*z*es (Heb. Mo*sh*e), Je*ss*e (Heb. Yi*sh*ay), *S*imon (Heb. *Sh*imon) etc.?


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## Kevin Beach

origumi said:


> Then why would it happen to Jo*sh*ua but not to *S*olomon (Heb. *Sh*lomo), I*s*aiah (Heb. Ye*sh*aayah), Mo*z*es (Heb. Mo*sh*e), Je*ss*e (Heb. Yi*sh*ay), *S*imon (Heb. *Sh*imon) etc.?



Because none of those names contains the combination -syu- in its English pronunciation.


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## berndf

Kevin Beach said:


> Because none of those names contains the combination -syu- in its English pronunciation.


I think Origumi reacted to your last sentence:





> Maybe too it was influenced by a growing knowledge of Hebrew among scholars from the 18th century.


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## Kevin Beach

berndf said:


> I think Origumi reacted to your last sentence:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Kevin Beach said:
> 
> 
> 
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> Maybe too it was influenced by a growing knowledge of Hebrew among scholars from the 18th century.
> 
> 
> 
> Well, it _was_ a secondary comment and it _was_ preceded by "Maybe"!
Click to expand...


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## Outsider

Wikipedia states a bit mysteriously that "As a result of the origin of the name, a majority of people before the 17th century who have this name are Jewish". My guess would be that this name came into English directly from Hebrew.


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## tFighterPilot

Outsider said:


> Wikipedia states a bit mysteriously that "As a result of the origin of the name, a majority of people before the 17th century who have this name are Jewish". My guess would be that this name came into English directly from Hebrew.


I suppose that makes sense. Though that is probably the only occurrence of a Jewish name being turned into a general name. Also, it still begins with "Jo" instead of the original "Yeho", so it seems it's kind of a mix.


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## berndf

Outsider said:


> Wikipedia states a bit mysteriously that "As a result of the origin of the name, a majority of people before the 17th century who have this name are Jewish". My guess would be that this name came into English directly from Hebrew.


This would not explain the spelling of the Prophet's name in the bible. In the tradition of the Western Church, original Hebrew versions of Biblical names have systematically been ignored and the rendering in local languages has always been driven by the Greek and Latin versions of those names.


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## Outsider

berndf said:


> This would not explain the spelling of the Prophet's name in the bible.


I don't understand your objection. Although "Jesus" and "Joshua" have the same etymon, in general people are not aware of this. The two are different derivations, which no doubt entered the English language at different times and from different sources. The former via Latin, the language of the Bible in Western Europe prior to the Reformation, the latter (I suggest) more directly from Hebrew, at a later time and in a secular context, even though it was also naturalized to some extent.



berndf said:


> In the tradition of the Western Church, original Hebrew versions of Biblical names have systematically been ignored and the rendering in local languages has always been driven by the Greek and Latin versions of those names.


Up to the Reformation, yes. But if I'm not mistaken the Reformation brought with it a sort of "back to roots" movement which in English specifically meant that new adaptations of Biblical names, closer to the original Hebrew, were in many cases adopted in the new translations of the Bible.


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## berndf

Outsider said:


> I don't understand your objection.
> ...
> Up to the Reformation, yes. But if I'm not mistaken the Reformation brought with it a sort of "back to roots" movement which in English specifically meant that new adaptations of Biblical names, closer to the original Hebrew, were in many cases adopted in the new translations of the Bible.


This never included spellings of names. No other biblical name, neither in Catholic nor in Protestant tradition, saw the replacement of "s" by "sh" for etymological reasons. And no other Western language (German, French, etc) changed the "s" in "Iosua" to anything the would represent the "sh" sound is the respective local language. 

I'd say, etymological reasons for this change can quite safely be excluded. Phonetic ones are much more plausible.


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## Outsider

I must agree with you, since I don't really think the specific name "Joshua" comes from an innovative Bible translation (though I think that may have happened with other, less ordinary names). But I go back to my earlier suggestion that it must have been borrowed from Hebrew without the intervention of Latin (or at least under some archaizing influence), at a later time than "Jesus".

As a curiosity, Portuguese and other Romance languages also distinguish between "Jesus" and "Josué" (Joshua) in modern translations of the Bible (I wonder how it showed up in the Vulgate), even though they still change "sh" to "s".


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## berndf

Outsider said:


> As a curiosity, Portuguese and other Romance languages also distinguish between "Jesus" and "Josué" (Joshua) in modern translations of the Bible (I wonder how it showed up in the Vulgate), even though they still change "sh" to "s".


Also Latin Vulgate distinguished Iosua and Iesus. I am no aware of any Western European language where Iosua and Iesus are merged.

Neither Greek nor Latin had a "sh" sound and had no way to transcribe it in foreign words other than "σ"/"s". Romans probably wouldn't have heard any difference between [s] and [ʃ]. Greeks even today don't hear the difference. A Greek lady once asked me for directions to a place called "Ober*sch*lei*ß*heim" containing both sounds. When she tried to pronounce the name she randomly varied between all possible combinations ("Ober*sch*lei*ß*heim","Ober*ß*lei*sch*heim","Ober*ß*lei*ß*heim","Ober*sch*lei*sch*heim").

The digraph "sh" is an English invention (I think 14th century; see e.g. here the transition of spelling from "scip" to "ship"). Hence Portuguese could not have "changed" "sh" to "s".


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## Outsider

I think it goes without saying that this whole discussion is about sounds, not spelling.


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## berndf

Outsider said:


> I think it goes without saying that this whole discussion is about sounds, not spelling.


The distinction between the two sounds is an early medieval development in the per-cursors of modern Western European languages. At the time the Vulgate was written, neither Latin nor Germanic had the [ʃ] sound. Talking about sound rather than spelling, it is still a meaningless question to ask, if Portuguese did "change 'sh' to 's'".


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## arielipi

Have you ever thought of the way you speak? Saying words from different set of languages is hard. 
Perhaps they twisted names to make it easier to pronounce... Just like we do to english words - every tion is tzya and every -y is -ah
Now say globalizatzya - isnt it harder that globalization? Construktzya construction. And so on.


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