Q. Is it true that the name 'Jesus' means 'earth-pig' in Latin? I was told by some messianics this is why we should not use it but instead use His Hebrew name.

A. No, it doesn't. The word 'Jesus' doesn't (and couldn't) exist in Latin because Latin never had the letter 'J'. Those who make this claim are primarily ultra-messianics who insist we can only use the Hebrew name of the Messiah to be saved and so insist we cannot therefore use the name 'Jesus'. The argument is advanced that 'Jesus' is a pagan name and therefore idolatrous and incapable of 'saving' anyone when you use it to call upon the Messiah. Please click on the 'ultra-messianics' link above to see the fallacy of their reasoning.

The claim made by these highly legalistic, extremist messianics basically follows fallacious logic showing how uneducated and unqualified these people are to be making any such ridiculous claim. This is how they 'think':

• 1. In Latin the word 'Jesus' means 'Earth-Pig';
• 2. The etymology of the word 'Jesus' comes from the Latin 'Ge' (Earth) and 'Sus' (Pig);
• 3. Therefore 'Jesus' means means 'Earth Pig'.

As mentioned, the letter 'J' did not exist in Latin and therefore neither the did consonant and vowel combination, 'Je'. But to be fair, 'Je' didn't exist in English until relatively recent times either and if you go to an original 1611 King James Bible, for instance, you'll see that is so:

Luke 4:1, and everywhere else in King Jimmy's 1611 New Testament, refers to the Saviour as IESUS. Only later did the English language start using the French 'J' instead of 'I'. Why did we use 'I' and not 'J' for centuries? Because the name of the Messiah in Latin was, and is, Iesus. And yet you will find many apologists for the 'Earth-Pig' theory either dishonestly or ignorantly claiming that the Latin for the English Jesus is 'Ge', meaning earth, and 'sus' meaning 'pig'. It isn't. It's Iesus. Neither the 'i' or the 'j' sound are the same as the 'g' sound, nor does 'i-e' sound like 'ge'.

I suspect someone in the 'earth-pig' camp confused Latin with modern Italian where 'Jesus' is called 'Gesù and I suggest this is where they got their 'Ge' from. 'Earth-pig' in Italian is 'maiale di terra' and doesn't remotely sound like 'Jesus', does it? You can't have both - do you believe 'Jesus' is related to modern Italian (which calls Him Gesù) or ancient Latin (which called Him Iesus)? Italian has evolved considerably from ancient Latin over many centuries.

You cannot transliterate from one language then take that transliteration and then try to TRANSLATE that transliteration back into the same language and then translate it differently than the word you originally translated it from. That's nonsense. I will leave it to you to decide whether the people making this claim are either ignorant or dishonest. We will show them grace, however, by giving them the benefit of the doubt and assume they're just ignorant. Most of the pop theologians these days are.

Please understand that translation does not work this way. You cannot derive the etymology of the word 'Jesus' by doing this kind of mental gymnastics. You may be quite sure that anyone who claims that 'Jesus' means 'earth-pig' does not know anything about translation or etymology - it's that simple (unless they are being dishonest).

Iesusis the Latin transliteration of the Greek Iesous and 'Jesus' is the transliteration of the Latin. Different languages have different grammatical rules and that is why words change. Thus if I were Russian and my family name were Tchaikovsy, my wife's married name would be Tchaikovska and not Tchaikovsky. (and if you were German you'd use a 'w' instead of a 'v'). That's the way Russian works. Were I to become Anglicised then my wife's name would follow English grammatical rules and my wife would become Mrs.Tschkaikovsky like myself. The article on the ultra-messianics cited above explains all of this in detail.

You cannot simply take a word in one language and then automatically apply that word to a word in another language, and then take the meaning from the other language and apply it back to the first language because that isn't how translation is done, especially when those two languages are not derived from one another. Though today we speak of the Greco-Roman family of languages, Greek and Latin are nevertheless two separate Mediterranean tongues with different scripts, let alone a different language.

An example it cited by another writer responding to this nutty messianic claim which intellectually is en par with the pseudo-science of flat-earthism. An Englishman (or American) is living in the Czech Republic and notices that the word 'plot' is used in both languages. In English it means 'a plan made in secret by a group of people to do something illegal or harmful' as in 'there’s a plot to overthrow the government' (synonyms: conspiracy, intrigue, secret plan/scheme, stratagem), or the main events of a play, novel, film, or similar work, devised and presented by the writer as an interrelated sequence, as in 'the plot consists almost entirely of a man and woman falling in love' (synonyms: storyline, story, chain of events, scenario, action, thread). This word, with a long etymological developmental history, has the corresponding verb form to either 'secretly make plans to carry out (an illegal or harmful action) as in 'the two men are serving sentences for plotting a bomb campaign' (synonyms: plan, scheme, arrange, organise, lay, hatch, concoct, devise, frame, think up, dream up, cook up, brew, conceive) or to 'devise the sequence of events in (a play, novel, film, or similar work), as in 'he would plot the burgalry while he drove to work'.

However, in modern Czech the word 'plot' it means a fence.

It would obviously NOT be correct to take the Czech meaning of the word and apply it into the English and then use that meaning to show that when a person uses the word 'plot' in English they are actually referring to a 'fence'. That would be silly, wouldn't it?

Even in closely related languages like Norwegian and Swedish you have to be careful. A customs-post in Norwal is called a toll but in Swedish a tull but tull in Norwegian means 'nonsense' or 'rubbish'. Or the word gift in Norwegian means 'poison' or 'married' but in English 'present'. Language is complex and it's constantly changing.

Beware of the amateur linguists who do not know what they are talking about who think two sounds in two unrelated languages must mean the same thing. As should be obvious the English 'Jesus' (which incidentally is spelled the same way in German, Norwegian, Swedish and Danish but pronounced the old Latin way as 'Iesus' which is almost the same sound as the Greek 'Iesous') does not, and cannot, mean 'earth-pig' in any way, shape or form. This is simply an attempt by ignorant or otherwise plain malicious people to demonise the Saviour of the world whose Name is correctly translitered from the Hebrew 'Yah'shua' and the Aramaic 'Yeshua' to the Greek 'Iesous' and to the Latin 'Iesus' to give us our English/Germanic 'Jesus'.

Should we use the Hebrew form once we know it? That's another controversy altogether because messianics are not agreed on how it was originally pronounced given that the Messiah's Name in New Testament times was in any case a contraction of an earlier, longer name with more vowels than they used in the First Century AD, namely, Yehoshua or 'Joshua' in English. So don't be intimidated by those who are not called to be teachers in the Messianic Community (Body of Christ) and who prove it by their shere ignorance and stupidity. Worse, they are doing tremendous damage by leading souls astray and telling people who are saved through genuinely trusting Christ that they aren't, however they pronounce His Name. Given what a pig represents in the kashrut law of Yahweh, I would say what these people are doing is bordering on blasphemy. Shame on them and may Yahweh rebuke them until they repent!

Messianic Evangelicals call the Saviour 'Yah'shua' but we are not in the least bit troubled by those who call Him 'Yeshua', 'Iesus' or 'Jesus' because we all know it's the same Person. It's only those who want to be 'special' who erect walls of partition again and in so doing take the Name of Elohim (God) in vain, breaking one of the Ten Commandments. Yahweh is not the way His Name is spelled or spoken but what that Name represents or means - His character. Yah'shua (Jesus) means 'Yah[weh] saves and whether you use the true original Hebrew, Yah'shua, or the translated 'Jesus', we all know that Jesus still saves, not the letters 'J e s u s' nor the sound 'jeezuss'.

This page was created on 13 February 2021 Last updated on 13 February 2021

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