A Short Note On the Name Yahya

Did the name Yahya arise due to a misreading of the name Yuhanna in Arabic? Early Arabic script was without diacritical points. Today the Apostle John's name in Arabic is يوحنا Yuhanna. Quran's Yahya is يحيى. But if Muslims were reading the name John with a different spelling, might it have been ٮحىى? There is no waw 'u' and no alif, a glottal stop, which in today's spelling is used as an 'a', but alif maqsura in this scenario. There is a ya 'i' which may be read as a nun 'n'.

If this is the case, then the Muslims' 'Yahya' was dependent upon a written source.

Useful material:

Rebuttals to Islamic Awareness: And No One Had The Name Yahyâ Before

Yahya

Yahya/John

A Yahya/Isa Parallelism

A Brief Note on the Names Ilyas, Isa, Yahya and Zakariyya

Tawd

On the likely significance of the name Isa

Memorisation

A tool for converting pointed Arabic to unpointed:

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