First and Second Thessalonicans and the Epistle of Jacob

When doing translation work, I am dealing with several languages at once - Ikizu and/or Zanaki, Swahili, English, and Greek. It's easy to keep them all straight except when it comes to names. For example, sometimes if I am writing in English after having been reading Swahili, I will accidentally type "Yesu" instead of "Jesus." I always catch myself right away, and it's not a big deal.

However, the other day I wrote 1 Thessalonicans. It looked wrong, but I couldn't figure out what was wrong about it for a moment. I mean, Paul's letter to the church in Ephesus is called Ephesians, and his letter to the church in Rome is called Romans, his letter to the church in Thessalonica should be called Thessalonicans, right?

Wrong. You forget that this is English we're dealing with! The equivalent of Thessalonicans is what the people of Thessalonica are called in Ikizu, Zanaki, Swahili, Greek, and most other languages around the world (having not done a scientific study of it, I can't give a percentage of that), but oh no, not English. I looked up everything I could think of online that might be enlightening as to why good old English decided to drop a consonant out of the name, but alas, I came up with nothing. Nobody wants to admit the slip-up happened! In all fairness, it probably happened in the Latin Vulgate and good old King James carried the new name over. But as to why it has never been added back in, well, I should write Tyndale and Zondervan and complain!

 And as if that weren't enough to put poor English speakers over the edge, have you ever thought about the name James? Want to know what the name James is in Greek, Swahili, Ikizu, and Zanaki, and many other (sane) languages around the world? Jacob. Oh yes, Jacob.

In Greek, meaning the original New Testament, the name is Iacobus. The name came from Hebrew, where it was Yaaqov (think Yakov, which, if you say it aloud, is easy to hear is nigh about Yacob. Then you have to remember that English likes to turn Y into J). But, all that to say that Iacobus somehow because Iacomus in Latin, and then, English took that and ran far, far away with it. To keep things interesting, English decided that in the Old Testament we could keep Jacob, based on the Hebrew name, but that in the New Testament, we should have James.

If you want to see other "Jacob" names that have ended up in other languages that also got tweaked out by Latin, here's a little sampling: Jaime, Giacomo, Seamus, Hamish, Jack, and Diego.

As for me, if I ever accidentally refer to the Epistle of Jacob, forgive me. I was probably calling it that in Swahili earlier that day. If, however, I start talking about the epistle of Seamus, just send me on a vacation to Ireland, because clearly I need it!

*To be perfectly clear, I want to make sure everyone knows that I still fully believe in the inerrancy of Scripture and the accuracy of these translations!