Ian is John. So are Evan, Ivan, Sean, and Shane. How can one Hebrew name change so much?

Added: 2026-05-25

[00:00:00]The name Ian is John, and so is Evan, Ivan, Shawn, and Shane. Or at least they all share a common origin, the Hebrew name Yehohanan, shortened form Yohanan, meaning God is gracious. It's a wonderful example of how given enough time, language change can make words unrecognizable.

[00:00:20]I previously described how John got jacked up, how little hanky-panky can turn it into Hank, although it's more commonly Henry. Names can be more than one thing. And how the name Jonathan, and thus John without an H, originally came from a different Hebrew name, Yehonatan, meaning gift from God. But the John family tree has many branches, so let's explore a few more. Hebrew Yohanan became Greek Ioannes, Latin Ioannis, Old Irish Eoin, I probably pronounced that wrong, Scots Gaelic Owen, unrelated to English Owen, that's Eugene, but also a different video, Ian, and finally English Ian. Latin Ioannis became Welsh Ieuan, then Ifan, then English Evan. English Ivan comes from Slavic Ivan, which sounds like the Welsh and also derives from Johannes, but it took a different route via Byzantine Greek and Old Church Slavic. Both versions retain Latin's initial E vowel as well as insert a v between the O and the A, likely due to interplay between the two sounds. It should be noted that this is convergent change and not inherited from a shared ancestor. Latin Ioannes became Medieval Latin Johannes, I to J because they used to be the same letter, and the H was added to better reflect the spelling of the Hebrew origin. This was borrowed into Old French as Jean, and into Irish as Shawn, because they don't have a J. This gives us English Shawn, Shaun, and Shawn.

[00:01:55]The Ulster Irish pronunciation, Shawn, gives us English Shane. These are what linguists call doublets, words with a common origin that were borrowed into a language at different times following different paths, but that's another video which I've already made. For now, let's just marvel at the linguistic diversity we were able to capture from a single Hebrew origin, and I didn't even cover all of them.

[00:02:19]Maybe another time.