Why did we get away from Latinized Old Testament names?

[HomeschoolDad]

One of the first things I noticed, when coming from the non-Catholic world into the Catholic world, was that the names of Old Testament figures were different, at least in pre-Vatican II Bibles and other works, than they are in Protestantism. For instance, Osee-Hosea, Abdias-Obadiah, Aggeus-Haggai, Josue-Joshua, and so on. Yet translations in the past 50 years or so have deferred to the Protestant usage, and the old Latinized Hebrew names are unknown. How and why did this happen?

I know my Catholic school, which operated on a poverty budget if ever there were such a thing, kept a lot of the old books well into the late 1970s, and the old usages could be found. That’s how I learned them. I have been thankful more times than I can name, that our school was too poor to afford new books! That’s how I learned about so many traditions that were consigned to the memory hole, and most of all, how I learned of the splendor and holiness of the Traditional Latin Mass — “now why exactly did we give all this up?”

 

[VanitasVanitatum]

now why exactly did we give all this up?”

Irrational trends sometimes pop up.

 

[po18guy]

Comedian Flip Wilson had a comedy skit where he was a pastor of the “Church of What’s Happening Now”

It seems that a little of this has infected other aspects of faith.

 

[Bithynian]

How and why did this happen?

Three reasons.

(1) The Latinisations were typically Latinisations of Hellenisations of Hebrew names. הַגַּי (Haggay) to Ἀγγαῖος (Aggaios) to Aggaeus. Sometimes the sound changes departed significantly from the underlying Hebrew, as in Ὄβδιος (Obdios) and Abdias standing for צֹבַדְיה (Ovadyah).

(2) The Anglicisations are often direct transliterations of the Hebrew. But they were done according to their non-standard pre-contemporary grammar. Hence we now transliterate צֹבַדְיה as Ovadyah rather than Obadiah.

(3) More pertinently, their current names prevailed more commonly amongst English speakers in the 20th century, whether Catholic, Jews or Protestants. Most of these English names have been documented in some form or another prior to the Reformation, and I wouldn’t think of their use as characteristic of Protestants.

 

[DIERM]

The names used have nothing to do with Catholic Theology, Dogma, or Doctrine. If you know who the person is that is being referred to, and their contribution to Salvation History, whether John or Jack or Juan or Johan or Giovanni or Sean or Yahya or Jean makes little difference…“Call me what you want, just don’t call me late for dinner!”

 

[Genesis315]

The answer is ecumenism. It’s the same reason for the renumbering of the Psalms. Basically we were willing to compromise and change anything we could to have commonality with the Protestants, thinking they would change in the other things we couldn’t to have commonality with us. They didn’t.

 

[on_the_hill]

This struck me not long ago, when I realized that Rosh Hashanah is probably where we get Hosannah from, as in “Hosannah in the highest.”

And I wonder about pronunciations, too.
For example, I think, technically, Peking and Beijing are both pronounced Beijing, even though their Anglicized spellings are different.

 

[on_the_hill]

I remember Victor Borge once referred to Giuseppe Verdi as Joe Green.

 

[Loud-living-dogma]

Okay, well, isn’t the actual Hebrew name of Jesus, Yeshua or something similar?

 

[BartholomewB]

I remember Victor Borge once referred to Giuseppe Verdi as Joe Green.

That quip was old when Victor Borge was young
.

 

[porthos11]

One of the first things I noticed, when coming from the non-Catholic world into the Catholic world, was that the names of Old Testament figures were different, at least in pre-Vatican II Bibles and other works, than they are in Protestantism. For instance, Osee-Hosea, Abdias-Obadiah, Aggeus-Haggai, Josue-Joshua, and so on. Yet translations in the past 50 years or so have deferred to the Protestant usage, and the old Latinized Hebrew names are unknown. How and why did this happen?

I know my Catholic school, which operated on a poverty budget if ever there were such a thing, kept a lot of the old books well into the late 1970s, and the old usages could be found. That’s how I learned them. I have been thankful more times than I can name, that our school was too poor to afford new books! That’s how I learned about so many traditions that were consigned to the memory hole, and most of all, how I learned of the splendor and holiness of the Traditional Latin Mass — “now why exactly did we give all this up?”

Oh thank goodness we did. I cannot stand reading about Noe, Josue, Elias, Eliseus, Isaias, Jeremias, Osee and Aggaeus. Or going through the books of Paralipomenon and Esdras.

We “abandoned” those because in 1943, Pope Pius XII ordered Catholic scholarship to use the original languages as their bases, so the Vulgate was no longer the “gold standard” for future Catholic Bibles as a base for translation. When translating from the Hebrew, the Hebraized names are the natural target renderings.

Those Latinized names are a major reason I would have nothing to do with the Douay-Rheims Bible.

 

[Loud-living-dogma]

HomeschoolDad:

One of the first things I noticed, when coming from the non-Catholic world into the Catholic world, was that the names of Old Testament figures were different, at least in pre-Vatican II Bibles and other works, than they are in Protestantism. For instance, Osee-Hosea, Abdias-Obadiah, Aggeus-Haggai, Josue-Joshua, and so on. Yet translations in the past 50 years or so have deferred to the Protestant usage, and the old Latinized Hebrew names are unknown. How and why did this happen?

I know my Catholic school, which operated on a poverty budget if ever there were such a thing, kept a lot of the old books well into the late 1970s, and the old usages could be found. That’s how I learned them. I have been thankful more times than I can name, that our school was too poor to afford new books! That’s how I learned about so many traditions that were consigned to the memory hole, and most of all, how I learned of the splendor and holiness of the Traditional Latin Mass — “now why exactly did we give all this up?”

Oh thank goodness we did. I cannot stand reading about Noe, Josue, Elias, Eliseus, Isaias, Jeremias, Osee and Aggaeus. Or going through the books of Paralipomenon and Esdras.

We “abandoned” those because in 1943, Pope Pius XII ordered Catholic scholarship to use the original languages as their bases, so the Vulgate was no longer the “gold standard” for future Catholic Bibles as a base for translation. When translating from the Hebrew, the Hebraized names are the natural target renderings.

Those Latinized names are a major reason I would have nothing to do with the Douay-Rheims Bible.

So, do you say “Jesus” which is latinized, or Yeshua? You “cannot stand” reading other latinized names?!

 

[porthos11]

So, do you say “Jesus” which is latinized, or Yeshua? You “cannot stand” reading other latinized names?!

“Jesus” because the New Testament is written in Greek, which has “Iesous” as the name. So it works just fine.

In the Old Testament, the name is properly rendered as “Joshua”.

And yes, I still cannot stand those Latinized Old Testament names. I find the Douay-Rheims an irritating read.

 

[Dovekin]

The answer is ecumenism. It’s the same reason for the renumbering of the Psalms. Basically we were willing to compromise and change anything we could to have commonality with the Protestants, thinking they would change in the other things we couldn’t to have commonality with us. They didn’t.

Actually, it does not have much to do with Protestants. It is more from adopting the Hebrew text used by Jews. Ecumenism has some influence, but mostly it is part of the drive to get to the original text.

 

[BartholomewB]

I cannot stand reading about Noe, Josue, Elias, Eliseus, Isaias, Jeremias, Osee and Aggaeus. Or going through the books of Paralipomenon and Esdras.

That’s how I learned them. I have been thankful more times than I can name, that our school was too poor to afford new books!

For a half-century or longer, beginning in the 1960s, newspaper readers never had any difficulty in recognizing the names Khaddafi, Kaddafi, Gadhafi, Gaddafi, Qaddafi, and others. We knew they were all the same dictator. Similarly, it takes no great skill to penetrate the disguise of an alleged Ezekiel, Zephaniah, or Habakkuk, and unmask our old acquaintance Ezechiel, Sophonias, or Habacuc. Or the other way around, of course, depending on which direction you’re traveling in.

However, several of the old Catholic names are known to me in print only. I have never heard them spoken aloud, and I can only guess at how they were pronounced. I would imagine OH-zee, NOH-ee, and JOZ-yoo-ee, for instance. Or am I on the wrong track?

Gaddafi? Kaddafi? Qadhafi? How do you spell it?

Other variations include "Gadhafi," "Al-Gathafi," and "Kadafi," creating a mess for news organizations.

www.csmonitor.com

 

[porthos11]

Oh it’s not about skill or figuring it out. I know off-hand who these names refer to.

I simply don’t like it. It’s always been Noah and the Flood, and Joshua and the walls of Jericho, and Elijah and Ahab for me. Not Elias and Achab.

It just goes to what I said, and this is purely personal. Has nothing to do with figuring out names. I dislike the Douay-Rheims and its Latinisms. I find the idea of it being the “Catholic KJV” laughable. It does not hold a candle to the King James Bible. It’s Latin pretending to be English.

 

[DaveBj]

This struck me not long ago, when I realized that Rosh Hashanah is probably where we get Hosannah from, as in “Hosannah in the highest.”

Actually, no.

Hashanah is ha-shanah, “the year”. "Rosh is “head,” so – “head of the year”.

Hosanna is actually hosha-na (the sh got lost when it was filtered thru Greek), meaning “save us”.

D

 

[Salibi]

In Arabic his name is قذافي, which transliterates to Qazhafi. The q is a “strong q” sound unique to Semitic languages, and doesn’t exist in English. The zh is an Arabic sound with no equivalent in English. The name is messy to translate.

 

[HomeschoolDad]

I cannot stand reading about Noe, Josue, Elias, Eliseus, Isaias, Jeremias, Osee and Aggaeus. Or going through the books of Paralipomenon and Esdras.

We “abandoned” those because in 1943, Pope Pius XII ordered Catholic scholarship to use the original languages as their bases, so the Vulgate was no longer the “gold standard” for future Catholic Bibles as a base for translation. When translating from the Hebrew, the Hebraized names are the natural target renderings.

What was good enough for Pius XII is good enough for me. Thanks for pointing this out.

In all honesty — and I realize this is more cultural conditioning than anything else — I find the Latinized names awkward and, there’s no nice way to say this, kind of dorky-sounding. I am all in favor of rendering Hebrew names as close to the original as possible. I just thought it was yet another “ecumenical surrender” — trying to make ourselves as palatable to Protestants as possible, while getting precious little in return. Talk about “being the bigger man”!

However, several of the old Catholic names are known to me in print only. I have never heard them spoken aloud, and I can only guess at how they were pronounced. I would imagine OH-zee, NOH-ee, and JOZ-yoo-ee, for instance. Or am I on the wrong track?

I have never heard them spoken either. If I’m not mistaken, I think Josue is pronounced “josh-a-wee”, and Noe is pronounced “no-wee”. I believe Josue is also a Hispanic given name.

I am all in favor of preserving tradition, but this is one time I think revising the spelling and pronunciation to conform to Jewish and Protestant usage is something well-advised.

One other thing I would note is that traditionally, it was relatively rare for Catholics to have given names taken from the Old Testament — the names were either NT or saints’ names. Protestants have traditionally taken their names from both the OT and NT, as well as their own cultural traditions. Nowadays it seems like everyone is a Taylor, Tyler, Sailor, Hunter, or whatever… anything but a saint’s name!

It just goes to what I said, and this is purely personal. Has nothing to do with figuring out names. I dislike the Douay-Rheims and its Latinisms. I find the idea of it being the “Catholic KJV” laughable. It does not hold a candle to the King James Bible. It’s Latin pretending to be English.

I prize the Douay-Rheims for its relative fidelity to the Vulgate, but I will admit, it is clumsy and kind of leaden where the KJV flows gracefully. From a pure literary standpoint, for elegance, the KJV is unsurpassed.

 

[tommy37]

Mean Giuseppe Verdi—great football player!