Jake Fax's Personal Name List

Italian form of Iacomus (see James). Giacomo Puccini (1858-1924) was an Italian composer of operas.

Form of Jacob used in the Latin New Testament to refer to the two apostles named James.

Variant of Iacob.

Welsh and Galician form of Iacobus (see James). This was the name of two early Welsh kings of Gwynedd. It is also the name of the villain in Shakespeare's tragedy Othello (1603).

Estonian form of Jacob (or James).

Estonian form of Jacob or James, and a Flemish short form of Jacob.

Finnish form of Jacob (or James).

Finnish and Estonian form of Jacob (or James).

Finnish form of Jacob (or James).

Derived from Jackin (earlier Jankin), a medieval diminutive of John [1]. There could be some early influence from the unrelated French name Jacques [2]. It is often regarded as an independent name. During the Middle Ages it was very common, and it became a slang word meaning "man", as seen in the terms jack-o'-lantern, jack-in-the-box, lumberjack and so on. It was frequently used in fairy tales and nursery rhymes, such as Jack and the Beanstalk, Jack and Jill, Little Jack Horner, and Jack Sprat.

American writers Jack London (1876-1916) and Jack Kerouac (1922-1969) were two famous bearers of this name. It is also borne by the actor Jack Nicholson (1937-) and the golfer Jack Nicklaus (1940-). Apart from Nicklaus, none of these famous bearers were given the name Jack at birth.

In the United Kingdom this form has been bestowed more frequently than John since the 1990s, being the most popular name for boys from 1996 to 2008.

Diminutive of Jack or Jacqueline. A notable bearer was baseball player Jackie Robinson (1919-1972), the first African American to play in Major League Baseball.

From the Latin Iacob, which was from the Greek Ἰακώβ (Iakob), which was from the Hebrew name יַעֲקֹב (Ya'aqov). In the Old Testament Jacob (later called Israel) is the son of Isaac and Rebecca and the father of the twelve founders of the twelve tribes of Israel. He was born holding his twin brother Esau's heel, and his name is explained as meaning "holder of the heel" or "supplanter", because he twice deprived his brother of his rights as the firstborn son (see Genesis 27:36). Other theories claim that it is in fact derived from a hypothetical name like יַעֲקֹבְאֵל (Ya'aqov'el) meaning "may God protect".

The English names Jacob and James derive from the same source, with James coming from Latin Iacomus, a later variant of the Latin New Testament form Iacobus. Unlike English, many languages do not have separate spellings for the two names.

In England, Jacob was mainly regarded as a Jewish name during the Middle Ages [1], though the variant James was used among Christians. Jacob came into general use as a Christian name after the Protestant Reformation. In America, although already moderately common, it steadily grew in popularity from the early 1970s to the end of the 1990s, becoming the top ranked name from 1999 to 2012.

A famous bearer was Jacob Grimm (1785-1863), the German linguist and writer who was, with his brother Wilhelm, the author of Grimm's Fairy Tales.

Spanish form of Iacobus, the New Testament Latin form of James. The apostles are also commonly denoted Santiago in Spanish.

French form of Iacobus, the New Testament Latin form of James.

Slovene form of Jacob (or James).

Medieval variant of Jack. It is also sometimes used as a short form of Jacob.

Basque form of Jacob (or James).

Archaic Polish and Kashubian form of Jacob.

Form of Jacob (or James) used in several languages.

Serbian, Croatian and Macedonian form of Jacob (or James).

Polish, Czech and Slovak form of Jacob (or James). In Polish and Slovak this refers to both the Old Testament patriarch and the New Testament apostles, while in Czech this is used only for the apostles (with Jákob for the patriarch).

Variant of Jacques used by Shakespeare for a character in his play As You Like It (1599).

Scots form of Jack. Among the English, this is a slang term for a Scotsman.

Scots diminutive of Jack.

Scots diminutive of Jack.

Lithuanian form of Jacob (or James).

Hebrew form of Jacob.

Spanish form of Iacobus (see James). The form Santiago refers more specifically to the New Testament apostles.

Turkish form of Jacob.

Arabic form of Ya'aqov (see Jacob).