It's common knowlege that Muhammad is the most popular name on Earth.
Well, actually, Muhammed is.
No wait. Mohammed is.
Or, is it... Mohamad?
OK, you get the idea.
This is a very common name, no matter how it's spelled.
For its popularity, Muhammad can thank religion.
It comes from the Prophet Muhammad, who founded the religion of Islam.
Well, more specifically, the name comes from the Arabic verb "hammada," meaning "to praise," and so
the name essentially means "praiseworthy."
After Islam spread, it became a tradition for many families to name their firstborn after the Prophet--
and, with a population of 1.8 billion people within the Muslim faith (the second-to-largest religious group in the world)--
this has resulted in nearly 150 million men bearing the name in one form or another.
But, there is one religion larger than Islam, and that's Christianity--
which has an additional 600 million people following it.
So, how come there's no Christian name to rival "Muhammad"?
Well, as it turns out, there just might be. And this name is Yohanan.
If you just thought to yourself [that] you've never heard this name before in your life, well, you'd be wrong.
But let's learn where it came from first.
This name got its start in Hebrew and is actually the shortened version of the name...
...however that's pronounced.
But, this version preserved the two essential parts of the name:
"Yo," referring to Yahweh, the Hebrew name for God,
and "Hanan," which means "to be gracious."
So "Yohanan" means "God is gracious."
Of course, just like Muhammad (except way more so), Yohanan has become the subject to changes
in both spelling and pronunciation across many, *many* different cultures.
Although originally Hebrew, the name really became popular due to Christianity, as two very important figures in the Bible share this name.
As Christianity spread out of the Middle East, one of the first places it became established was the Roman Empire.
The name came to Rome via Greece, where it became Ioannes, and then came into Roman Latin as Iohannes.
For a long time, Christianity existed as a cult, and practicing Christians were persecuted throughout the Roman Empire.
But eventually, in 306 CE, Emperor Constantine came into power and became the first Roman emperor to convert to the religion.
This paved the way for the faith, and therefore the name, to spread throughout Europe.
And with each leap into new cultures and languages, the name changed just a little more.
The further away the name got geographically, the more it changed linguistically. A good example would be Iohannes's journey to England.
Leaving Rome, Iohannes entered Germanic language and became Johannes.
Moving into France, this became Johan, and eventually Jehan.
Reaching England, Jehan was further shortened into its most common form today:
John. What I find interesting is how much we've replaced old versions of the name with this more basic spelling.
Take John Calvin for example, the French religious reformer.
He was born as Jehan Cauvin, but has since had his name changed to what it's known as today as different forms of his name became more popular.
Of course, that's only the beginning of the story. From England, John spread into nearby Cornwall as Jowan,
and into Wales as Ifan, which eventually became Evan,
Iefan, Ieuan, Siôn, and Ianto.
And then, all of *these* versions made their way even further, into Scotland,
and John became Ian (which we now say as "ee-an"),
Iain, Ewan, and Eoin.
Oh and yeah, I might not pronounce all of these even remotely correctly, so, have fun laughing at me in the comments.
Next door, in Ireland, John became Sean (or Shawn (or Shaun)). Oh, and Shane.
That means all of these names came from the single Yohanan. And similar things happened throughout Europe,
each time yielding different variations specific to the language and dialects unique to the region.
Going back to France, names like Johan and Jehan primarily became Jean.
But also, variations like Jeannot, Yann, Yoan, Yannig, and Yannick arose.
Following this, Spain's John became Juan, but also, each region within Spain also had their own way of using the name.
In Aragon, for example, Juan became Chuan,
while in the Basque, they got *real* creative, and came up names like Ganix and Iban.
And even Galicia got in on it, with Xoán.
From Spain, however, the name eventually passed into Portuguese as Juo, Joane, and Joan,
which eventually became João.
Now, Greece might have been one of the first places for the original Yohanan to reach, which might make you think the names here would be most similar to it.
But that also means it was Greece that had the most time to come up with alterations of the name.
And now, Ioannes has become Ioannis, Gianni, Giannis, Yannis, Yanni, Yiannis, and Yianni.
But if the Greeks had a lot of time to mix things up, the Italians had almost the same amount of time,
and Iohannes resulted in Giovanni, Gianni, and Gian.
I think it's important to mention, too, that the names Nino and Vanni were originally nicknames derived from these names.
Oh yeah, and of course Corsica produced its own form of the name, too, in Ghjuvanni.
I already mentioned the Germans a little, but another interesting thing happened here.
So far, all the shortenings have, for the most part, dropped the "h" part of the name. But the opposite started to happen here,
where Johannes dropped its starting "Jo," and the name Hannes came about.
From Hannes, we got Hans and Han.
Then, a bit further, into the Netherlands, Hans was transformed into Hank--
the same way how in England, John became Jack.
But perhaps the most unique derivations came from transplanting Johannes into the more Slavic, Eastern European sphere.
In countries like Russia or the Ukraine, the most common form of the name is definitely Ivan,
but that doesn't mean other forms didn't arise as well.
Jan, Honza, Janez, and Jovan all became moderately typical names as well.
In Albania, these names became Gjin, Gjoni, Xhon, and Xhoni.
It was specifically the Lithuanians who gave us Jonas, while nearby Estonia came up with Juhan, Juho, Janno, Jukk, and Jaanus.
And trust me, Europe alone has produced many, many other variations.
But they start getting *real* cool once you *leave* Europe. In the Congo, for example,
John became Dzon--which is actually very similar to the Vietnamese version of the name: Dzôn.
Yeah, I don't know if those sound very different.
And, lastly, we have the United States, which, for the most part, hasn't altered the name too much.
But they have started to experiment with multiple names to create new ones.
For example, the combinations of the names Ray and Shaun (which is originally an Irish form of the name John)
has created the name Rashaun.
Now, I'll be honest. I couldn't find exact numbers on how many people have most of these names.
So, this is speculation. But I'm willing to bet Yohanan, and all of its derivations, is at the very least comparable in size to the name Muhammad.
Now, I'm very confident in this, not because of all the names I just mentioned, but because there are still two huge groups that I haven't mentioned.
The first is last names. The last name Johnson ("the son of John") is the second most common
last name in the United States alone, and Jackson, which comes from the name Jack, which is usually a nickname for John,
is the thirteenth most common.
If we looked at all the last names which also had originated from different derivations on first names,
well, this video would be twice as long.
But, possibly even more important than last names: we haven't talked about women!
Now, there are no real feminine versions of Muhammad really being used today,
but the name Yohanan definitely has some.
From the English name John comes Joan, Jane, Janet, Janis, Janice, and Jean.
The Irish name Shawn has become unisex lately, but has also given us names like Shawna and Shavonne...
...and other ones I'm not even going to try to pronounce.
The Germanic Johannes has given us Johanna and Johanne.
For our Ivans, we have Ivana and Ivankas.
From the name Hans, there's Hanna, but not Hannah--
that's a different name actually.
The Italian masculine Giovanni became Giovanna,
Gianni became Gianna,
and even the nickname Nino became Nina.
And lastly, the Spanish name Juan created the name Juanita.
Basically, versions of the name Yohanan are everywhere--male, female, first, or last names.
But unless someone takes a count of all of its different versions (which there are thousands of),
we'll never know for sure if there's more Yohanans or Muhammads in the world.
Now, I was going to end this video with a great segue about how I don't have any patrons named John yet,
and trust me, everyone would've loved it,
but, literally while making this video, I got a patron whose name is John.
So, I guess I won't do that.
So, instead, I'm just gonna do this: Support me on Patreon if you want to help me and this channel out.
Oh, also: I'm considering doing a Q-and-A since I hit a big subscriber milestone recently, so I'm going to need questions.
I'll try to read the comments, but if you follow me on Twitter, or support me on Patreon, or even go to my subreddit
(which I forgot I made until recently),
there's a better chance I'll actually see them there.
So, yeah. Thanks for watching, subscribe if you want, give this video a like to tell me I did a good job,
and I'll be back with another one soon. Thanks! :)