As a child, the first time I read the Bible, one question needled me before any other, why did they have to translate the names? As far as I understood it, someone’s name is someone’s name, regardless of whether you met them in Jerusalem or Zimbabwe, right?…
But when the missionaries brought the Bible to our forefathers, they also “translated” the names of biblical figures into versions they assumed would be more relatable in our language.
Ruth became Rute
Timothy became Timoti
Leviticus became Revhitiko
Mathew became Mateo
Some of these make sense, an almost instinctual extrapolated translation and then there were others which left a lingering question as to how:
Peter became Petro
John became Johani
But how oh how did;
James become Jakhobo
If we were to follow the other conventions, James would surely have become something like “Jemusi.” But nooo it became Jakhobo.
How did James end up Jakhobo?
To find an answer, I went looking into the origins of the Bible translated into Shona.
The standard Chishona Bible, the Bhaibheri, was first published as the Shona Union Version in 1949 “Baiberi Magwaro Matsvene aMwari” set in Doke orthography, the writing system developed for Shona in 1931 by the South African linguist Clement Martin Doke.
The 1949 translation project was led by Andries Adriaan Louw of the Dutch Reformed Church, working out of Morgenster Mission near Great Zimbabwe in Masvingo.
Since the pioneering translators at Morgenster belonged to the Dutch Reformed, it is widely held that the Dutch Statenvertaling the classic Dutch translation, itself rooted in the Hebrew, Aramaic and Greek originals, served as a conceptual guide alongside the source texts and other European versions of the day.
What we ended up with might have looked like a translation but it was actually a translation of a translation of a translation.
Hebrew → Greek → Latin → Dutch → Shona.
Modern Shona Bible versions have shifted over the years. The Bhaibheri Dzvene MuChiShona Chanhasi (the Shona Contemporary Bible), published by Biblica (then the International Bible Society) and launched in 2006 after its 2005 print, draws instead on modern, eclectic Greek source texts such as the Nestle-Aland edition, in step with widely used English equivalents like the New International Version.
So depending on which bible is on your shelf, you are reading a translation shaped by a different set of hands, decades, and denominational leanings. But even then, the legacy of earlier translation decisions lingers.
Which brings us back to James.
In the original Hebrew of the Old Testament, the name was Ya’aqov. When the New Testament came to be written in Greek, the writers kept the name largely intact and rendered it as Iakobos (Ἰάκωβος). This means the Apostle we call “James” in English and the Old Testament patriarch we call “Jacob” were, all along, exactly the same name.
Hebrew: Ya’aqov
Greek: Iakobos
Latin: Iacobus later mutated into Iacomus (where the ‘b’ sound turned into an ‘m’).
Old French: Iacomus was shortened to Jammes.
English: The French name was brought to England and became James.
Medieval Latin Bibles even kept the Old Testament “Iacob” and the New Testament “Iacobus” as visibly separate forms, and that split survived all the way into the King James Bible of 1611.
The idea that King James personally pushed to have an apostle share his name is a popular and entertaining legend and given King James I’s heavy hand in overseeing the 1611 translation, it sounds entirely plausible at first glance. However, historical linguists and textual historians note that the King did not invent or force the name “James” for his own ego.
Meanwhile, the Shona bible translation followed the Greek roots and Iakobos naturally transitioned into Jakhobo. So, while English speakers know him as James, the Shona Bible preserved a direct historical nod to Jacob (Ya’aqov), uniting the Old and New Testament figures under the exact same ancestral name.
Makes you wonder how many other things were “lost in translation”.
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