Last name origins & meanings:
- English, German, French, Jewish (Ashkenazic), Lithuanian, Czech and Slovak (Jonáš), and Hungarian (Jónás): from a
medieval personal name, which comes from the Hebrew male personal name
Yona, meaning ‘dove’. In the book of the Bible which bears his
name, Jonah was appointed by God to preach repentance to the city of
Nineveh, but tried to flee instead to Tarshish. On the voyage to
Tarshish, a great storm blew up, and Jonah was thrown overboard by his
shipmates to appease God’s wrath, swallowed by a great fish, and
delivered by it on the shores of Nineveh. This story exercised a
powerful hold on the popular imagination in medieval Europe, and the
personal name was a relatively common choice. The Hebrew name and its
reflexes in other languages (for example Yiddish Yoyne) have
been popular Jewish personal names for generations. There are also
saints, martyrs, and bishops called Jonas venerated in the
Orthodox Church. Ionas is found as a Greek family name.
- Jewish (Ashkenazic): respelling of Yonis, with Yiddish
possessive -s.
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