Have you ever wondered whence the name Jesus Christ comes from? As a series of characters, in Latin alphabet, with a given pronunciation in the English language? I mean, the guy spoke Aramaic*: you can be quite sure that no one, ever, called him Jesus Christ.
* I haven't started Hebrew yet, so consider this part of the etymologycal digging still opened. From what I gather though, anno zero [it] contemporaneous Hebrew and Aramaic are pretty close and their abjads are similar.
Jesus
Let's start with the first name. In a spelling closer to original pronunciation, it's something like Yeshua from Hebrew or Eashoa from Aramaic. The spelling drifted after two transliterations, through Greek to Latin. But mere transliterations don't explain the whole difference: part of it is also due to Greek grammar:
Since Greek had no equivalent to the semitic letter ש shin [ʃ], it was replaced with a σ sigma [s], and a masculine singular ending [-s] was added in the nominative case, in order to allow the name to be inflected for case (nominative, accusative, etc.) in the grammar of the Greek language.
So we have an English evolution of a Latin name transliterated from Greek transliterated and adapted from Hebrew/Aramaic.
Why not just use a direct transliteration from Hebrew/Aramaic?
Christ
Last name gets even more interesting:
From Ancient Greek Χριστός (Khristós), proper noun use of χριστός (khristós, “the anointed one”), a calque of Hebrew מָשִׁיחַ (māshīaχ, “anointed”).
So we have an English evolution of a Latin transliteration from Greek, with the Greek itself being a calque/translation of a Hebrew/Aramaic word.
Now since that is but a regular word, we have three options, from worst to best:
use a correct transliteration from Greek;
use a correct transliteration from Hebrew/Aramaic;
- use an actual translation/calque.
Transliteration from Greek
χριστός (khristós, “the anointed one”)
Well, that's actually a tough one. Notice that the Greek χ gets transliterated as kh, whereas the Latin was ch. Apparently (we can't really know for sure now, can we?) the pronunciation of both the Greek χριστός and the Latin Christus was indeed kh.
Now here it gets interesting. The pronunciation of most European languages drifted towards a plain k, as in Christ [en], Christ [fr], Kristus [cs], etc.
On the other hand, Greek kept the same spelling, but the χ pronunciation evolved from Ancient Greek to Modern Greek from kh to ch (as in loch ness [en], or all German or Czech ch.)
Russian gets real fun though. The pronunciation is consistent with the modern Greek one -- but why?
The Russian х matches the Modern Greek χ in visual appearence and current pronucunciation -- but not Ancient Greek. Strangely enough though, English and French transliterations of Russian seem to match the Ancient Greek pronunciation of the letter. Go figure.
Transliteration from Hebrew/Aramaic
Hebrew מָשִׁיחַ (māshīaχ, “anointed”)
Doesn't that sound familiar? Indeed:
From Latin Messias, from Hellenistic Ancient Greek Μεσσίας (Messías), from Aramaic משיחא (məšīḥā), from Biblical Hebrew מָשִׁיחַ (māšîaḥ, “anointed”).
Messiah! Wait now, does that imply people commit pleonasms -- a sin akin to blasphemy in my book -- whenever they write Our Messiah Jesus Christ? Yes, it does.
Actual translation
Hebrew מָשִׁיחַ (māshīaχ, “anointed”)
I mean, come on, Yeshua The Anointed [en] doesn't sound so bad. Better than Jošua Pomazaný [cs], and definitely better than Josué-le-Oint (L'oint [fr], from beautiful French verb oindre [fr]), maybe "Ouin-Ouin" pour les intimes [fr]?
Jesus H. Christ!
Are these transliteration and translation drifts deliberate? If we consider the renaming of all saints (e.g. John, Juan, João, etc.), it seems more likely that there was a deliberate design to make the religion look more local and not from abroad -- the bad kind of abroad, of course. And especially, to make it a distinct local tradition séculaire [fr], that is, our own local religion -- as opposed to the heresy of some Jewish "foreigners" in some Middle East one-horse town some two odd thousand years ago.