Joaquim

History & meaning

The Hebrew is a small sentence: Yah, the divine name, and the root qum, to rise or be raised up. A king of Judah wore it in the Book of Kings. The bearer who carried it into Catholic Europe, however, is not in the Bible at all — the tradition naming Joachim as the husband of Anne and father of Mary comes from the second-century Protoevangelium of James, a text that never entered the canon. The medieval cult was enormous regardless, and Portugal took the name in hard: by the nineteenth century Joaquim was one of the commonest men's names in the country, which is precisely why it now reads as a name from an older generation.

Brazil gave it two national figures. Joaquim José da Silva Xavier — an ensign and part-time tooth-puller, hence the nickname Tiradentes — was hanged and quartered in Rio in April 1792 for his part in the Inconfidência Mineira, the Minas Gerais conspiracy for independence; 21 April is a national holiday in his name. And Joaquim Maria Machado de Assis, the grandson of freed slaves, born in a Rio hillside neighbourhood and largely self-taught, became the greatest novelist the country has produced, wrote Memórias Póstumas de Brás Cubas and Dom Casmurro, and was the founding president of the Brazilian Academy of Letters in 1897.

Quim, Quincas and the ending

Start with the J, which in Portuguese is the soft buzz of “measure”, written zh here. The oa runs together into a single quick glide, so the whole first syllable is barely there: zhwa-. Then the stress lands hard on -quim, where the M is not a consonant at all but an instruction to send the vowel through the nose — something like “keeng” with the G left off. The short forms are their own reward. Portugal uses Quim; Brazil uses Quincas, which is why the drunk hero of Jorge Amado's A Morte e a Morte de Quincas Berro d'Água and the philosopher Quincas Borba in Machado are both, formally, Joaquims.

Why parents choose it

Parents who pick Joaquim now are usually picking a grandfather's name on purpose. It is unmistakably Lusophone, it has civic rather than merely pious associations in Brazil, and it comes with the best diminutives of any name in this corner of the Portuguese list. The nasal ending is the one thing an English speaker will need help with.

Middle names for Joaquim

The end-stress wants a softer, longer partner: Joaquim Maria — Machado's own, and a normal male combination in Portuguese — Joaquim Pedro, Joaquim Vicente, Joaquim Rafael. The middle names guide explains why the second stress matters more than the syllable count.

Famous Joaquims

Tiradentes is the martyr of Brazilian independence. Machado de Assis is its finest writer. Joaquim Chissano led Mozambique from 1986 to 2005 and negotiated the end of its civil war; Joaquim Barbosa became the first Black justice to preside over Brazil's Supreme Federal Court.

Consider instead

Joaquín is the Spanish form, better known in the United States and easier to place. João is the other great Portuguese biblical name, shorter and even harder to say. Simão keeps the apostolic register with a different nasal ending.