"Et tu, Ionathane?!" (was Re: old hat)

Wilson Gray hwgray at GMAIL.COM
Mon Mar 6 14:19:02 UTC 2006


On 3/5/06, Mark A. Mandel <mamandel at ldc.upenn.edu> wrote:
>
> ---------------------- Information from the mail header
> -----------------------
> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       "Mark A. Mandel" <mamandel at LDC.UPENN.EDU>
> Subject:      "Et tu, Ionathane?!" (was Re: old hat)
>
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> (In response to a thread on the American Dialect Society discussion list,
> and cc-ed to the American Name Society list)
>
> Wilson Gray wrote to Jonathan (not John) Lighter:
> > Et tu, Ionathane?!
>
> Who replied:
> >"Ionathane" looks funny.  Like it should rhyme with "monotony."
>
> To which Meredith Dixon noted:
> >There's a reason for that: it should be Ioanne.  Names translate too. :)
>
> Whom* replies:
>
> Yes, but not that way. Wilson is right. "Jonathan" and "John" are
> different
> names.
>
> According to http://www.behindthename.com/
>
> JONATHAN: From the Hebrew name Yehonatan (contracted to Yonatan) meaning
> "YAHWEH has given".
>
> JOHN: English form of Johannes, which was the Latin form of the Greek name
> Ioannes, itself derived from the Hebrew name Yochanan meaning "YAHWEH is
> gracious".
>
> (But I think these names contain the Divine name "Yah", not the
> four-letter
> "YHWH", which is not the same. ANS input?)
>
> -- * Dr. Whom, Consulting Linguist, Grammarian,
>     Orthoepist, & Philological Busybody
>     a.k.a. Mark A. Mandel


IIRC, it's "Yeho," in which the "e" is a shwa (I refuse to use the
German-based spelling, schwa), a form that looks the same as the form that
means "his God," but, in cases like this, emphasises the oneness of God as
THE God. Or so I think I read somewhere or other - Gesenius? - a zillion
years ago, ca.1969.

For some reason, the Tetragrammaton, YHWH, appears in gold Hebrew characters
over the entrance to the Old (Catholic) Cathedral of Saint Louis, the one in
St. Louis on the riverfront and not the one in New Orleans in the French
Quarter.

-Wilson

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