What is the most universal name?

SnokenKeekaGuard@lemmy.dbzer0.com to Asklemmy@lemmy.ml – 113 points –

Ofc Mohammed is the most common name but thats a name common within the muslim community. I have noticed the name Sarah in every country, regardless of race or religion. Or it might be an abrahamic religion thing but thats most of the world atleast.

I suspect other Abrahamic names might make the cut.

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Ivan, Giovanni, John, Jean, Shaun, Sean, Shane, Zane, Ian, Jan, Yves, Juan, Johannes, Yohan, and more...

The name means "gift". Pretty universal.

Everyone is saying it means "gift" but Wikipedia (as well as an embroidery my grandma gave me when I was young!) says it comes from Yohanan/Johanan ื™ื•ึนื—ึธื ึธืŸโ€Ž (Yรดแธฅฤnฤn), which means "YHWH (Yahweh/God) is gracious", with gracious being used in the form of "merciful" or "forgiving".

Which can kind of mean the same thing but is also different enough. Johnathan, however, does mean "God has given".

TIL that John and Johnathan are not different versions of the same name!

Ironically, all the variations you mentioned do not have the gift part, except for the letter 'n' :)

They all originate from Johnathan, which in Hebrew means, literally "God gave", the "Joh" part meaning "God", and "Nathan" meaning "gave".

Despite how many forms it takes, it isn't very common in the muslim world or asia which make up for a vast proportion of the world. So many of the names variations are within Europe.

I'm sure "gift" as a name is popular in those regions, too, even if it doesn't stem from the same root.

Theodore, Mateo, matthew, jonathan, jesse, gia, Anjali, Doris. Theres like 30 more, I didnt notice a super common asian name, anjali is fairly common in india. But yeah name meaning gift is probably up there.

John the Baptist is considered a prophet also in Islam, so local variations of the name John are not so infrequent in Muslim countries, at least according to Wikipedia, see Yahya.