Jonah

How to say it

/ˈdʒoʊ.nə/

What it means

Hebrew Yonah, 'dove.' The biblical prophet swallowed by a great fish on his way to Nineveh; his short book is one of the Hebrew Bible's strangest and most-anthologized.

Jonah is the English form of the Hebrew Yonah ('dove'). The Book of Jonah is one of the shortest in the Old Testament: God tells Jonah to preach to Nineveh, Jonah flees in the opposite direction, the storm comes, he's swallowed by a great fish, prays from its belly, gets vomited onto dry land, finally preaches to Nineveh, and then sulks when God spares the city. The story is read on Yom Kippur as a meditation on mercy. As an English given name Jonah was rare until the 1990s biblical-name revival; it entered the US top 200 in 2001. Common short: Jo or Jonny.

Heads-up notes

• Pop culture

  The whale story is the universal reference; some parents lean into the rebellion-and-mercy reading, others find it a strange anchor.

Who's worn it

Historical figures, characters, and public faces who share the name. The cultural surface, for whatever weight you want to give it.

• Jonah (Bible) The reluctant prophet swallowed by a great fish, then sent to Nineveh
• Jonah Hill American actor and filmmaker, Superbad and Moneyball

Spelling variants

• Yonah
• Jonas

Names with the same feeling

• Noah Rest, comfort
• Elijah My God is Yahweh
• Isaiah Yahweh is salvation
• Jeremiah Yahweh will exalt
• Caleb Faithful, devotion

See Jonah from another angle