So I understand that Jesus was originally called Yeshua..and I was always a bit confused in general why names change so drastically in different translations? I know that the Hebrew language didn’t have a typical “J” sound..but so what? If that’s how Jesus was called then why wouldn’t he still be called that in a different language?
The English language went through a number of changes. If I understand it right, certain words that started with an 'I' or 'Y' sound started to be pronounced with a 'J' sound. So we end up with words like 'judge' and the name of Jesus is pronounced with an initial J sound.
The Greek version of the name had a masculine ending on it, hence the added 's' sound added at the end, but with a different letter to represent the S sound that visually looks more like the final letter in the Hebrew Yeshua. Latin retained the 's' sound from Greek, and I think English got the name through Old French, initially without an initial J sound. English speakers eventually added the J sound through a regular shift in the language that put j's on initial I's and Y's as stated above. Vowels have also shifted in English, and English puts dipthongs on a lot of words. So the first syllable of 'Jesus' has a 'long e' sound which is rendered /ij/or/iy/. The latter syllable ended up with /ʌ/ over time instead of an /u/ sound.
Think about other names that end with an 's' in Greek. Judah came to be called Judas. We end up with a different name for Judah in the Old Testament and Judas in the New Testament. Then there is a third variation we have in English, Jude. James name got transliterated weird over time. The name is Jacob or Yakov. Greek puts an s sound on the end, Iakobos. In English that became James. In Spanish Saint Iacabus from Latin becomes San Diego or Santiago.
I’ve also heard that the name change to “Jesus” was part of the Roman Catholic Church’s attempt to paganize Christianity to make it more palatable to their mostly Pagan citizens. The name “Jesus” was supposed to be a derivative of the name “Zues”...meaning Son of Zeus, or From Zeus. You can hear it more clearly in how Spanish speakers pronounce it (Hey-Zeus).
I've heard some silly and strange things before, too. Beware of folk etymologies which aren't documented. Scholars can look at how words evolved in pronunciation over time and find documentation for it. A word in one language can sound like a word in another without the two having any relationship. I learned Indonesian. 'Mine' in English sounds like 'main' in Indonesian. The Indonesian word means to play.. The word 'baik' in Indonesian sounds like 'bike' in English. It means 'well' or 'good' in Indonesian.
An English-speaking expat got a job in Indonesia and hired a maid. The maid did not speak English, and the expat did not speak Indonesian. One day, the expat tried to teach the maid an English word. He patted the seat on his bicycle and said, "bike. bike.' The maid patted the bike and said, 'baik, baik.' She agreed that the bicycle (speda) was a good thing.
'Mie' in Indonesian sounds like 'me' in English. A group of Indonesians went out to eat with their expatriate boss who did not know Indonesian. They ate noodles. A female employee asked him, "Do you like mie?" When she caught what she had said, she was embarrassed.
There is a whole movement that seems to specialize in junk etymologies. A friend of mine who spent years in Israel said that Messianic Jews who speak Hebrew think the sacred name movement is weird. A friend had a Bible study. I visited a few times. I went back to visit after a long time, and it had been taken over by sacred name movement people. They argued that 'Jesus' came from 'Isis'-- which I could tell was utter linguistic nonsense. Supposedly 'Lord' came from some pagan word. They sent me a digital copy of this long book that made all these claims. It was full of junk folk etymologies. The author would find some word that remotely resembled an English word in some ancient Germanic language and assume the two words were related, without any evidence from literature showing the word change over time like real language scholars use. I studied Linguistics for my undergraduate degree with a bit of emphasis on historical linguistics. Word derivations are either documented in literary texts or else they are theoretically derived based on established patterns of sound changes based on study of other languages. This book did neither.
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