ScandinavianHebrew2 syllables
Meaning: dove.
Jonas
| Origin | Scandinavian — the Greek and Latin form of Hebrew Yonah, the prophet Jonah |
|---|---|
| Meaning | Dove. Yonah is the ordinary Hebrew word for the bird, one of the few biblical names that is simply an animal |
| Pronunciation | YOO-nass in Swedish, Norwegian and Danish, stress on the first syllable. English speakers say JOH-nus |
| Popularity | Outside the current U.S. top 100; a steady Nordic and German name for the last forty years, and common in Lithuania for a different reason |
| Variants | Jonah, Yonah, Jónas (Icelandic), Joonas (Finnish), Jonáš (Czech), Yunus (Turkish and Arabic) |
| Nicknames | Jonne in Swedish and Finnish. Jon looks like one and belongs to Johan instead |
| Not a John | Jonas and Johan are unrelated names that happen to resemble each other — except in Lithuanian, where Jonas genuinely is John |
History & meaning
Hebrew yonah means dove, and it is the whole of the name. Greek translators of the Septuagint wrote it Ionas, Latin followed, and it is that classical spelling rather than the Hebrew one that Scandinavia and Germany use, which is why the Nordic form ends in an s that the original never had. The book behind it is the strangest of the prophetic books: Jonah is told to preach at Nineveh, boards a ship going the opposite way, is thrown overboard by sailors who cast lots to find who has angered the sea, and is swallowed by a great fish — the Hebrew says a large fish, not a whale. Nineveh repents. Jonah, unforgettably, is annoyed about it. Jewish congregations read the whole book aloud on Yom Kippur.
Two opposite associations came out of that story. English sailors made a Jonah into a person who brings bad luck aboard, an idiom still in working use at sea; meanwhile the dove of the name is the bird Noah released and the standard emblem of peace, so the name pulls warm and unlucky at once. In the north it entered the registers after the Reformation, with the wider Protestant appetite for Old Testament names, and stayed quietly available for four centuries before Scandinavian and German parents took to it in numbers from the 1980s.
Why parents choose it
An Old Testament name that has never been overexposed, with two open syllables and a meaning that is concrete, gentle and easy to explain to a child. It crosses borders without alteration, which is rare here. The costs are small: the possessive is awkward in English, and anyone who was a teenager in the late 2000s will think of a band before a prophet.
Middle names for Jonas
The s ending rules out another sibilant and rewards a vowel: Jonas Emil, Jonas Alexander, Jonas Frederik, Jonas Otto. Our middle names guide deals with s-ending first names at length.
Famous Jonases
Jonas Salk developed the first effective polio vaccine, announced in 1955, and never patented it; asked who owned it, he said the people did, and could you patent the sun. Jonas Vingegaard won the Tour de France for Denmark in 2022 and again in 2023. Jonas Gahr Støre became prime minister of Norway in 2021 after a career largely spent in foreign affairs.
Consider instead
Jonah is the Hebrew form, softer and commoner in English. Rasmus is the same Nordic register with a Greek rather than Hebrew source. Elias is the other Old Testament prophet name that Scandinavia genuinely uses.