Dear Susanna + Peter Pauling,
Thank you for posting the link to interesting short articles published in Die Welt about the origin of names.
For the benefit of the list members I thought I would try to translate the article linked below in your message about the origin of the name John and its derivatives. I don't read German very well but found articles like this to be interesting enough to motivate me to work on it. There are many words I don't know and still I wish I could find them in a German dictionary.
Leon Follmer
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Grotian and Guderian: the Big One and the Good Jan named after John the Baptist
By Hans Markus Thomsen
If one stresses the second syllable of the family name Guderian as given in the Brockhaus Enclyclopedia, it brings reminiscences to Roman emperor's names like Valerian and Aurelian. If one properly stresses the first syllable and sound the "d" like a "t", it reveals the origin of a name of a Baptist Saint: "good Jan".
Jan is a contraction of Johannes. In family names there are other variations: Bosian (bad Jan), Rodrian (red Jan), brute (big Jan), Lütjan (small Jan), Smalian (narrow Jan) etc. Only Mr. Klöterjahn in the "Tristan" was invented by Thomas Mann as well as Brute and Dumb John in common vernacular. Nearly all names can be modified with Johann and Hans and the various forms.
The estimated number of people in the world with names John, Jean, Giovanna, Juan, Iwan, Jonik and derivitives as Christian names is more than 30 million. The triumphant progress of displacing German names with biblical names began in the 13th century .
The fact that Johannes sits at the top of the list, is probable due to the fact that so many baptismal churches and chapels were consecrated to him. His admiration is also based on the Bible verse "under those who were born from woman, there is no one with higher standing than Johannes the Baptist.
994 Saints have the name Johannes, and in the long list of Popes, Johannes is most frequent (26 times).
Also, in folklore is the belief that lightning strikes no house in which Johanne lives, and the short form Hans became a fairy tale and legend figure of highest regard. [published in Die Welt , June 11, 2004]