Talk:Jonathan

Nathan and etymology

I was reading on the wikipedia article for Jonathan that "Etymologically, Jonathan is not a variation of John, but a longer version of Nathan." Now if Nathan means "God has given" and Jonathan also means "'God has given' or 'gift of God' then I am confused what the suffix jo does. This article has many entries but none of them are for hebrew. What does the addition of the Jon prefix mean in Hebrew? Ty 19:04, 20 March 2010 (UTC)

Did you look at the Hebrew meaning in the etymologies of both (deprecated template usage) Jonathan and (deprecated template usage) Nathan? You'll see that they're not the same. Nathan means "given", while Jonathan means "whom the Lord gave". The prefix Jo- is the part that adds "God" to the meaning, much like the suffix -el does in Daniel or Ezekiel. --EncycloPetey 19:09, 20 March 2010 (UTC)