Feast Day: February 11th
So I went deep down a Wikipedia rabbit hole researching “Jones” this week. One of my cousins had her first baby about two weeks ago, the baptism being last Sunday down on Maxwell Airforce Base (she and her husband are in the Airforce), and they named him Jones. I had certainly heard the name before, but almost exclusively as a last-name/surname. So, off I went on a deep-dive into human language, names, and etymology. To save you from a similar investigation: Jones itself originally comes from the Welsh version of “Johnson”, which, as you may be able to tell without perusing many articles on the subject, is a last-name for somebody who was the son of John. (Many surnames are like this, the father’s name with something added indicating “son-of”, like “Wil-son”, “Fitz-Gerald”, “O-Connor”, or “Rodríg-uez”. Another common way to derive a surname is from occupation [e.g. “Miller”, “Eisenhower”] or location [e.g. “Hamilton”, “Stone”]).
Of course, our rabbit hole now turns to the name “John”, which originally comes from the Hebrew name “Y’hohanan”, a name summarizing the phrase “YHWH is Merciful”. It shows up throughout the Old Testament though it grew greatly in popularity after one of the five Maccabean brothers had that name. Two of the most famous New Testament figures, John the Baptist and John the Apostle, indicate the name’s popularity in Our Lord’s day, and it only grew more widespread as Christian parents chose those saints as patrons for their baby boys. And now you can find versions of this name all over the world: Arabic: يوحنا / Yūḥannā, Chinese: 約翰 / Yuēhàn, Danish: Hans or Johannes, French: Jean, Georgian: იოანე / Ioane, … I think you get the picture!
But … this leads us to that enigmatic name of God, technically called the “tetragrammaton” (Greek meaning “four letters”), the four Hebrew letters: Yod [י], He [ה], Waw [ו], and He [ה], rendered in our Latin alphabet as “YHWH”. This is the name that God gives for Himself while speaking to Moses at the burning bush.
13 Then Moses said to God, “If I come to the people of Israel and say to them, ‘The God of your fathers has sent me to you,’ and they ask me, ‘What is his name?’ what shall I say to them?” 14 God said to Moses, “I am who I am.” And he said, “Say this to the people of Israel: ‘I am has sent me to you.’” 15 God also said to Moses, “Say this to the people of Israel: ‘The Lord, the God of your fathers, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob, has sent me to you.’ This is my name forever, and thus I am to be remembered throughout all generations.
[Exodus 3:13-15]
Whenever you see God referred to as the “Lord” (all capitals) in the Bible, that is an indication that originally the text had this four-letter Divine Name (יהוה / YHWH). To respect and keep holy God’s name, Jews will never articulate it, speaking instead another word such as “Adonai” (Lord) or “Elohim” (God), a practice maintained when one of our bible translations uses “LORD”. (With the same respect, notice that the name “Y’hohanan” itself abridges God’s name to just its first two letters.) As God Himself describes, His name means “He Who is.” Scholars debate endlessly on the topic, but we’re going to trust the LORD on the right interpretation of His name. “H-Y-H” in Ancient Hebrew is the basic infinitive “to be”, and by adding the prefix “Y-”, you make it third-person: “He [Who] is.”
You might think this has little to do with St. Jonas … and you’d be right. St. Jonas was a little-known monk who became a saint by praying the psalms while making rope for one of St. Pochomius’ monasteries in the Egyptian desert (St. Pochomius an emulator of the famous St. Anthony of the Desert). Sadly, hilariously for me, “Jonas”, derives from the Hebrew name “Jonah” (like the prophet), and probably has no connection to the name “John”. Most scholars think that it simply means “dove”, perhaps linking it to other related words which add a character of flightiness or instability.
Fr. Dominic can only laugh at having followed the wrong trail for so long in investigating today’s saint. Happily, Jonah – both the prophet and the monk – in the end still chose to follow the LORD. Happily for us, we also can always choose Christ no matter which path we’ve gotten ourselves onto thus far.