Sunday, September 17, 2006

name dropping

Ok, we are letting everyone know that when our daughter is born she will be welcomed into the world as..................... Johanna Eden Miller.

9 comments:

Margaret Bowman said...

no 'h' on the end? just wanted to make sure for future reference

Brian John said...

No, silly. I've never seen it spelled "Millerh."

Carrie said...

Just ask Unt Emma.

Tessie said...

i don't think i've ever seen johanna spelled with an h on the end. Johannah. That looks really weird. It looks too much like Jehovah. or JEEEEEEEEEEhosephat!!!

Carrie said...

That's actually a very astute comment, Vegemiter Tessy. In the Bible Johannah actually *has* to have an H on the end for the same reason that Jehovah does -- because written Hebrew has no vowels.

With no final H, there's no implicit indicator to have the final 'ah' sound when the word is spoken. So Johanna actually becomes Johann, in the Bible sense.

JHNH = Johannah

versus

JHN = Johann

In other words, there's no way to spell Johanna (no final h) in the Bible.

I *think* they would also have only 1 N, but I can't remember for sure.

In written English, fortunately, there are vowels, so we are able to spell such things as Johanna.

Jehovah in Hebrew is

JHVH

which is also

YHWH

since y/j are the same letter and v/w are the same letter (as far as they're concerned).

This might look familiar to you -- YHWH we translate as YAHWEH.

Jehovah and Yahweh are actually the same word; it just depended on who did the translating which vowels and consonants were used.

And if you recall your Indiana Jonnes -- in the Latin alphabet, Jehovah begins with an 'I'. ;-P

WAY WAY more than I'm sure you wanted to know about the history of Johannah/Johanna, but I learned all this when I was the cook for Jewish people in Boston, so I figured it ought to be good for something.

Margaret Bowman said...

I just figured the name Johanna/Johannah was the name Hannah with a Jo attached to the front. I have never seen the name Hannah without an h on the end so I didn't think Johanna(h) would be any different.

Brian John said...

Her name will be spelled Johanna.

Anonymous said...

OK, so now that we've settled the spelling....what about the pronunciation? Is it Jo-Hannah or Jo-Honnah or Jo-Anna?

Brian John said...

How have you heard us pronounce it?