What’s the most popular boys name in the Muslim world? “Mohammad,” or some spelling variation thereof. What’s a real popular name in the Spanish speaking world? “Jesus.” What’s *not* a popular name in the Anglosphere? “Jesus.” This has always kinda surprised me. Naming kids after revered characters is quite common, yet in the English speaking world naming your kid after the primary religious figure is considered inpoor taste. That said… “Joshua” is popular enough, won’t get you a second glance. Yet “Joshua” is the Anglicized version of the Latin name “Iesous,” which is a Greekified version of the Hebrew name “Yeshua,” what Jesus would have been called by the Hebrews of that time and place. Similarly, Mathew, Mark, John, Paul, Ringo, Steven, Luke, Han, Adam, Mary, David, Debby, Abigail, Peter, Joseph and a number of other distinctly Biblical names are now quite popular.
Why blather forth about this? Because I laughed my face off a few days at WalMart. Wandering about, minding my own business, I passed by a common enough WalMart trope: a mother yelling at her oblivious, misbehaving horrible little brat. You learn to tune such things out. But something penetrated the wall and got my attention: the mother, in yelling at her child, kept calling him “Messiah.” Now maybe it’s “Massiya” or some other oddball spelling, but the pronunciation was the same. And it seems to me that if “Jesus” is considered poor form, surely “Messiah” should be too.
Ponderable: if “Mohammad” is popular in the Islamic world, how about naming your kid “Allah” or “Mahdi?” Surely that would result in nothing but praise and instant puppies.