Dub Name Change/Hebrew to English

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Literature

• In The Bible, most changes to names are easily traceable if you know what usually changes: the letter "bet" is more often treated as a "b", even when it would sound like a "v" ("Abraham" vs. "Avraham"); "chet"s are treated like "h" ("Noah" vs. "Noach") or dropped entirely ("Isaac" vs. "Yitschak"); "yod"s being rendered as "j"s, an artifact of when they sounded alike ("Joshua" vs. "Y'hoshua"); "tsadi"s being given the "z" sound ("Zephaniah" vs. "Ts'fanyah"); "shin"s and "sin"s being mixed up. And then things get really interesting when you throw in Greek as an intermediate step: suddenly, a ton of names start ending in "s", usually preceded by "o" or "u" (combined with the "yod"-to-"j" thing above: "Jesus" vs. "Yeshua" or "Y'hoshua"). Whew. But a few names stand out for ditching these:
  • You've all heard of Lucifer, right? Well, in the original Hebrew, it goes more like "Heylel". And Lucifer? It's Latin, and means the same thing.
  • James. Brother of the aforementioned Jesus, and writer of a letter that was accepted into New Testament canon. Would it surprise you to learn that his name was Yaakov (Jacob)? That's right, even in the Greek, it's "Iakobos" (thanks to the "-os" ending), but in another case of "means the same in Latin", we have "James" now.
    • It's also no coincidence that the change was first made in the King James Version. The translators wanted to make sure the King was pleased with their work, so they switched the translated name from Jacob to James to give him a book of the Bible baring his name.
  • The Lord. The Tetragrammaton is usually rendered this way even when the text is trying to tell us His name. Thank the rabbis for this one; they instituted a ban on it out of fear that someone might break the actual commandment against misusing it. The first substitute? "Adonai". A pretty frequent title of His, anyway, it can be translated "Lord", so by the time translators got around to it, "The Lord" it was.