يحيى

Where it comes from

Uncertain.

It was long unclear why the Qur'an gave John the Baptist a name dissimilar to Hebrew יוֹחָנָן (Yōḥānān, “Yahweh is gracious”). The traditional Muslim explanation relates يَحْيَى (yaḥyā) to حَيِيَ (ḥayiya, “to live”) / يَحْيَا (yaḥyā, “he is alive”), while some scholars theorized that, because early Arabic texts omitted diacritics, the current reading يَحْيَى (yaḥyā) derived from a variant form يُحَنَّى (yuḥannā) (compare Christian Arabic يُوحَنَّا (yūḥannā)): written in rasm (unvocalised and undotted script), Yuḥannā ﯾ ﺣ ﻧ ﯽ could have been misread as Yaḥyā ﯾ ﺣ ﯾ ﯽ, as the نَّ (nna) and the يَ (ya) letters look identical (ـںـ (-n-)) in their rasm medial forms; thus, ي ح ن ى (“y ḥ n ā”) would have shifted to ي ح ي ى (“y ḥ y ā”).

Circa 1910, an inscription from 306 CE containing the name Yḥya was found; it was made in al-Ula by a Jew or a Christian in the Nabataean script as 𐢍𐢊𐢍𐢀 (but sometimes quoted as יחיא as if in Hebrew script), and it has been variously interpreted, either as indicating that in some communities Hebrew יוֹחָנָן (Yōḥānān) had developed into Yḥya and familiarity with this is why early Muslims used that form of the name for John in the Quran, or alternatively as indicating that the name يَحْيَى (yaḥyā) existed in pre-Islamic Arabic and al-Ulans translated יוֹחָנָן (Yōḥānān) to it in a manner akin to phono-semantic matching.

(See also epigraphic use of عِيسَى (ʕīsā).)

(The Mandaic Ginza Rabba also contains ࡉࡀࡄࡉࡀ (yaħya), but it is unclear whether this spelling predates or influenced, or postdates or was influenced by, the use of يَحْيَى (yaḥyā) in Arabic.)