His Mama Called Him Yeshua

I choose to call the Anointed One by his real name: Yeshua. Why? Because there’s nothing more intimate, more honest, than using the name a Jewish mama whispered over her newborn. A name isn’t a costume to swap out because someone, centuries later, and with a nasty streak of antisemitism, decided to rebrand him. My Jewish mama named me Iris. I find myself cringing when someone renamed me “Airisa” or “Eeris” just because it was easier on their tongue. Nu, really! When I lived in Latvia, some Latvians called me Airisa, while some Russians referred to me as Eeris. Sweet, maybe, but the people who truly knew me, who broke bread with me, cried with me, laughed with me, used the name my mama gave me. That drew me close. That felt like home.

Names are not decorations; they’re declarations. Rename a person and you risk erasing their story, their family, their heritage. Rename Yeshua and you risk sanding off his Jewishness—his language, his lineage, his life among Am Yisrael.

I liked it so much when friends used my given name because it told me they saw me, not a convenient version of me. And yes, I was uncomfortable... shrinking-into-my-chair uncomfortable, when people took the liberty to rename me as if my identity was a mispronunciation at Starbucks. So I’ll keep saying Yeshua. Call me stubborn, call me particular, but don't recreate me or Yeshua with your label maker. I won't call him by a name tacked on over a thousand years after his birth. I call him what his mother called him: Yeshua. That’s closeness. That’s kavod. That’s the truth. That's emis!

How did Yeshua end up with a different English label? Start with meaning. Yeshua comes from the Hebrew root for “save/deliver.” That’s exactly why the angel told Yosef: “You are to name him Yeshua, because he will save his people from their sins” (Matt. 1:21, CJB). The name was his goal.

As the Jewish good news spread beyond his first followers, who were Jewish, scribes had to approximate Yeshua in languages that lacked the “sh” sound and preferred to add endings that fit their grammar. From there, Latin copyists kept that non-Hebrew approximation. Centuries later, early English translators inherited these spellings, and printers eventually standardized them when the letter “J” became established in English. In other words, the later English label is a stack of substitutions and printing habits layered on top of the original Hebrew name.

Medieval Christian texts in England (14th–15th centuries) used their century's English spellings of the inherited form, instead of using his actual name, which is, and was "Yeshua." The exact English spelling "Jesus" first became standard in the 17th century, in Cambridge’s 1629 revision of the King James Bible, when printers used ‘J’ instead of the "I."

Jewish writers of the medieval era spoke of him in Hebrew, not English. The English transliteration "Yeshua" rises much later in modern print, as scholars and translators intentionally brought the Hebrew form back to the forefront.

Choosing Yeshua today honors his family, his people, his language—and the angel’s charge to Yosef that his very name declares what he does: he saves. Who does he save? His people.

He wasn’t confused about his identity, and neither was he coy about his roots. As he said, “You people don’t know what you are worshipping; we worship what we do know, because salvation comes from the Jews” (John 4:22, CJB). He did not re-label himself. He lived and died as a Jew—and he isn’t returning with a different identity. He will be the Lion of Judah! Calling him Yeshua is not a trend; it’s a matter of kavod, honor, and respect. It’s telling the truth about who he is.