Joshua

Joshua comes from Biblical Hebrew Yehoshua. Both Behind the Name and Wiktionary break it down the same way: yeho, a shortened form of the name of God, plus a verb meaning to save, giving 'Yahweh is salvation'. Wiktionary adds a cautious note that the name may have been formed by adding the divine element to the older name Hoshea, which matches how the Bible itself tells the story.

In the Old Testament, Joshua was Moses' assistant, one of the spies sent into Canaan and finally Moses' successor; his name had originally been Hoshea before Moses changed it. The Book of Joshua is named after him. The name has a famous linguistic twin: the Aramaic short form Yeshua passed into Greek as Iesous and into Latin as Iesus, the source of Jesus. Other languages turned Joshua into Josué (French and Spanish), Giosuè (Italian), Jozua (Dutch) and Josua (German).

According to Behind the Name, Joshua has been used as an English given name since the Protestant Reformation, so it has a long history in Britain. In Britain it is said JOSH-oo-uh, with the stress on the first syllable and the middle vowel slightly longer than in American speech.

Its three flowing syllables pair nicely with a crisp one-syllable middle name, as in Joshua James, Joshua Ted or Joshua Rhys. For brothers and sisters, Jonah, Elias and Hannah share its scriptural roots without sounding alike.