Some people debate whether to refer to the Messiah as Jesus or Yeshua (or Yahshua). Anyone who says you can’t call him anything other than Yeshua/Yahshua says he doesn’t respond to prayers from people who call him different names from other languages. I’m pretty confident that when Greek believers in the 1st Century prayed in the name Iēsous (“Jesus”), they achieved the same results that Hebrew- and Aramaic-speaking Jews achieved with Yeshua (יֵשׁוּעַ). Otherwise, the Bible would have said you can only say Yeshua.

The difference between Jesus and Yeshua is a matter of language. In Spanish, it gets translated as Jesus but pronounced as (Hey-soose), and in Italian, it is Jesù. In Arabic, his name is “Yasuʿ” (يسوع), which is what Arabic Christians call him, although Muslims call him Isa (يَسُوعَ). Yasu is a natural translation of the Hebrew Yeshua. Joshua in Arabic is Yusha (يوشع) and Yehoshua (יהושע) in Hebrew, and Jacob is Yakub (يعقوب) in Arabic and Ya’akov (יַעֲקֹב) in Hebrew. So it makes sense that Jesus should be Yasu in Arabic, just like Yeshua in Hebrew, rather than Isa. Yeshua means “Yah is salvation” or “the Lord saves.” According to Matthew 1:21, he was given this name to Joseph in a dream by an angel because he (Jesus) would save people from their sins. Isa is an attempt in Islam to remove Jesus’ connection to being God in the flesh or “God with us”, by changing the name from “Yah is salvation.”

Matt 1:20 As he considered this, an angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream. “Joseph, son of David,” the angel said, “do not be afraid to take Mary as your wife. For the child within her was conceived by the Holy Spirit. 21 And she will have a son, and you are to name him Jesus, for he will save his people from their sins.”

Then, in the next verse, Matthew tells us that this was a fulfillment of an Old Testament prophecy from Isaiah, which calls Jesus “Immanuel,” meaning “God with us.”

Matt 1:22 All of this occurred to fulfill the Lord’s message through his prophet:
23 “Look! The virgin will conceive a child! She will give birth to a son, and they will call him Immanuel,[Isaiah 7:14] which means ‘God is with us.’”

Isa 7:14 All right then, the Lord himself will give you the sign. Look! The virgin will conceive a child! She will give birth to a son and will call him Immanuel (which means ‘God is with us’).

This strife over Jesus’ name is about linguistics, which is not something to convict people over. Arab Christians call God Allah. Not because they believe Islam has the same God theologically, but because Allah means the one God in Arabic. In Spanish, God is Dios(from the Latin word Deus), and in Japanese, kami means deity or god. They are just the words for the titles, not necessarily the name of God, such as YHWH or Elohim. Yeshua ha Meshiach, in Hebrew and Aramaic, and Iēsous Christos, in Greek and Latin, are the same, as they all refer to Jesus Christ.

While Yeshua is his name in Hebrew, remember that all languages in the world were divided from the original language at Babel in Genesis 11, and God talked to Noah in a pre-Babel language. Therefore, God can speak and hear in any language since He made them all. It doesn’t matter if you say Jesus, Isa, or Yeshua. The gift of speaking in tongues that came upon those filled with the Spirit in Acts 2 is further evidence of this. In Acts 2, various Jews from different countries gathered in Jerusalem for Pentecost, and the followers of Jesus were empowered to speak and prophesy in foreign languages about Jesus to draw their attention. Then Peter addressed the crowd of onlookers in a language they could understand and preached the Gospel of Jesus and the message of salvation. It resulted in 3000 people getting saved. If they could prophecy about Jesus in different languages and pronounce his name differently, God would have no problem with people calling on Jesus in other languages with varying pronunciations because they use different phonemes and syllables. 

In the Letter J:
Some people claim the name can’t be valid because the letter “J” didn’t appear until later on in Europe. However, the letter “j” came from the letter “i” which itself is based on the Greek letter iota (ι), which is the first letter in Ἰησοῦς, which is Iēsous. Iota came from the Phoenician letter Yodh, the same as the Hebrew letter Yod (י). This letter makes the Y sound in Yeshua (ישוע‎), which is a variant of Yehoshua (יְהוֹשׁוּעַ) or Joshua. So, Jesus is a variant of Joshua. Other examples of this also exist. James is a variant of Jacob, which in Hebrew is Ya’akov (יַעֲקֹב), and Michael, Micah, and Michelle are variants of Mikael (מִיכָאֵל).
“J” sounds pre-existed Jesus since the Romans and Greeks used “J” sounds for Julias Ceasar, Jupiter, January, etc. Jesus’ name is only pronounced “jee-zuhs” in English. The New Testament was initially written in Greek and referred to Jesus by the name Iesous. The letter j is a derivative of the letter “i.” The letter “i” was pronounced with both the “j” and “i” sounds in Latin. In Greek and Latin, names that begin with ”i“ can be transliterated as “j” in English. The letter “i” originally had to do the work of both “i” and “j” sounds until j was separated in the Middle Ages. Examples: Julius (Ivlivs) Caesar, January (Ianuarius).

Here is a video about letters added later to the Latin alphabet, like G, J, and W.

Greek words translated from Hebrew that start with “i” come from Hebrew words that start with the “y” sound. This is because the Greek letter iota (ι) came from the letter yodh. The Greek alphabet is a derivative of the Phoenician alphabet. Phoenician is a Semitic language, so it shares an alphabet with other Semitic languages, such as Hebrew, Arabic, and Aramaic. Consequently, the letter yodh is equivalent to the Hebrew letter yod (י). Therefore, the “y” sounds in Hebrew can become “j” sounds in modern Western languages.

The New Testament was originally written in Greek, which has a different alphabet than Hebrew (although Greek shares roots with Hebrew), but also lacks the “sh” sound found in “Yeshua.” The New Testament authors decided to use the Greek “s” sound in place of the “sh” in Yeshua and then added a final “s” to the end of the name to make it masculine in the language. When the Bible was translated into Latin from the original Greek, the translators rendered the name “Iesus.” The Geneva Bible, which was translated into German, is believed to be the earliest rendering of “Jesus.” In German, the “J” is pronounced more like an English “Y” or the Latin “Ie”, as in “Yesus”, but it is spelled “Jesus”.

Therefore, the English name “Jesus” originates from the German translation of the Latin name “Iesus,” which is derived from the Greek name “Iesous,” in turn from the Hebrew name “Yeshua.” Even in modern languages, there are differences in the pronunciation of Jesus. In English, the name is pronounced with a hard “J,” while in Spanish, even though the spelling is the same, the name is pronounced with what would be an “H” in English.

A similar transition happened with the name James. James is an English version of the Latin word Iacomus, a variant of Iacobus. This name originates from the Greek “Iakob“ (Ἰακώβ), which is a translation of “Yacob” or “Ya‘akov” (Jacob). The apostle James’ name should actually be Jacob. However, in the case of James, there were linguistic changes in his name that changed the spelling from the letter b to the letter “m” in Latin. Additionally, there is a change in the pronunciation of the “o” sound.

Languages aren’t static; they die, they fuse with other languages, or they become simplified. These changes can occur for various reasons, such as cultural shifts resulting from conquest or technological advancements, as well as medium changes like the transition from etching in stone to writing on paper, to typing on a computer. Until the 17th century, u and v were interchangeable, which was convenient for stone writing because it is easier to write a “u” on paper than to etch it in stone. Another example of technological changes to language is how text lingo (using shorthand and emojis) has become its own sublanguage in the modern world since the advent of text messaging.

Various dialects have also developed and are distinguished by factors like region and generation. English is spoken in many countries worldwide, but it’s not the same everywhere due to variations in spelling and pronunciation, colloquial expressions and idioms, and historical and cultural influences. Nor is English today the same as it was just 100 years ago. English is a Germanic language that underwent significant changes when the French-speaking Vikings invaded England in 1066. Most Latin-based English words are from French.

To conclude, let’s look at the sacred name theology from a biblical perspective:
The Holy Spirit allowed people to communicate the gospel in multiple languages in Acts 2, so we were never mandated to all learn Hebrew. Therefore, this idea that we must use the original name is preposterous. Even the New Testament was preserved in Greek, which is not the language of the Hebrew people. We need historical, cultural, and linguistic information about the Bible’s original authors, which should never become a gatekeeping mechanism for others.

One last point. The Great Commission, as outlined in Matthew 28:18-20, is to teach all nations. The word “nation” in the New Testament is translated from the Greek word ethnos (ἔθνος), from which we derive the English word “ethnicity.” This means that biblical nations aren’t referring to nation-states but rather people groups (ethnicities). The word “kingdom” is used to refer to nation-states. This refers to the ethnic and national separation by language at the Tower of Babel in Genesis 10 and 11. Acts 2 reversed the Tower of Babel since God is unifying the nations back into one Kingdom, His kingdom. This may imply that the Messiah will return when all ethnic groups have access to the Bible (either in written form or as an audio or video recording) in their own language—something to ponder.

This may be why Jesus has not yet returned. Roman maps did not include Sub-Saharan Africa, the Americas, Australia, or Oceania in the first century. Additionally, we lacked the technology to record audio, so languages without written scripts and deaf individuals who use sign language would not have access to a Bible. Currently, ministries are working on video Bibles (sign language) and audio Bibles, and technology has allowed us to distribute these things electronically through the internet so they can be preserved and accessed all over the world immediately and withstand the test of time since they aren’t subject to decay like physical books and scrolls. Jesus is available to all people because he died to save “the world” from sin according to scriptures, so linguistic gatekeeping is an anti-Christ concept. Our use of Western European languages all over the world for business purposes is a byproduct of colonialism by that group, and not theologically necessary. Nor does it mean that those languages can’t be used to spread the Gospel to those people. Languages exist because of division, but the Kingdom is here to unite us under one God and one King, our savior Jesus/Yeshua.

Resources:
Video: Jesus’ name in the 1st century
An article on the subject of Jesus’ name
More on Yeshua vs Jesus