When Zakariya was moved by the wisdom and deep spiritual insight of the young Mary that was put under his guardianship, he began praying God to grant him a child as pious and virtuous, that would help preserve the ways of righteousness among his deviant kinsfolk
"..And indeed, I fear my successors after me..so grant me from Yourself a successor, Who should inherit me and inherit from the children of Yaqoub, and make him, my Lord, one in whom Thou art well pleased".
Through His angelic messengers, God responded to Zakariyya's plea
3:38-9,19:1-7"We give you good news of a boy whose name shall be Yahya: We have not made before anyone his samiyan".
Zakariyya continued calling upon his Lord for further enlightenment and elaboration, which he kept receiving through the angelic messengers. The same type of back and forth communication would shortly later occur between Mary and God, through the angels 3:38-47. Both Zakariyya and Mary are in these verses addressing Allah through His messengers. God in turn replies through His angelic conduits of revelation. Several angels visited Zakariyya with the good news 3:39. When he expressed his astonishment to his Lord, one of those angelic conduits of revelation swiftly conveyed the live answer from his Lord "He said: So shall it be, your Lord says: It is easy to Me.." The same occured with Mary 3:45-47,19:20-21. This is consistent with the Quranic axiom that Allah only communicates with humans through a barrier or the sending of angelic messengers.
Samiyan, describing the Zakariyya's future son, stems from S-M-W meaning elevation. It is used for the sky because it is raised high, as well as for a name because when one's name is called he rises, as well as for lofty attributes, because they set apart an entity from a group by raising it in status (see 19:65 in this regard). Literally the verse is saying that none has been "elevated" like Yahya before him. It can be elevation due to his name, or attributes, it is the context that decides and here, to claim that the context speaks of unprecedented appellation would be irrelevant.
The verse says that none like him was born in Zakariya' family, because in the previous verse it is his own relatives whom he feared, and therefore an assurance was now given to him that the promised son would not be like the other members of his family. This is all the more true if one considers the conditions in which the prophet Yahyah/John, and shortly after Jesus, were raised. They both came to warn the Israelites who had in great majority fallen into spiritual degeneration, under heavy foreign philosophical and spiritual influences, divided into sects, seeking closeness with the pagan Roman authorities, some denying the resurrection, others forsaking the spirit of the Torah for their soulless man-made rituals
19:12-5"O Yahya, take hold of the Book with strength, and We granted him wisdom while yet a child, And tenderness from Us and purity, and he was one who guarded (against evil), And dutiful to his parents, and he was not insolent, disobedient. And peace on him on the day he was born, and on the day he dies, and on the day he is raised to life".
Yahya was thus given wisdom and divine knowledge very early on, while still a child, in answer to Zakariya's prayer. In the NT, the angelic announcement of John's birth to Zakariyya clearly shows that it came in answer to the latter's prayers for a son that would distinguish himself among his contemporaries due to his righteousness and capacity to draw back his nation to the straight path Lk1:11-17. John/Yahya's righteousness was such a distinguishing characteristic among his family and people that in the NT Jesus is reported to have described him as such
Matt11:11"Verily I say unto you, among them that are born of women there hath not risen a greater than John the Baptist".
That whole part of Zakariyya's life, expressing his basic natural human desire, after many long years of childlessness to have a descendant, and God's compassionate acceptance from his patient servant, and above all his wish for a righteous progeny was lost during the course of the transmission of Christian tradition. The Quran restored it, in honour of both Zakariyya and Yahya.
Yahya and Isa, among other prophets singled out in the Quran similarly are Arabicised versions of the native names of those whom the Greek NT calls Ioannes/John or Iesou/Jesus. John the Baptist, whose Hebrew equivalent is Yohanan, is called up to this day Yahia or Yahia Yuhanna by the Mandaeans who claim to be his disciples, and is referred to as such in their ancient writing the Ginza Rba. It is interesting that the Quran uses a word for him that isnt used for anyone else. It describes Yahya as
19:13"hananan min ladunna/tenderness from Us"
which is a paraphrase of the Hebrew Yuhanna/YHWH is gracious.
As to Jesus, the exact name he had in his original tongue can only be speculated, based on the earliest writings with his name in Koine Greek and translations from Greek. The Greek Iesous is closer to the Aramaic Yeshu. There is also a very close sounding name in Hebrew, derived from the Biblical Yehoshua/Joshua. It was progressively shortened to Yeshua then Yeshu after the exiles returned to Judah from Babylon. In the time of Jesus, this name was common and a person named Yeshu may not have been named by the original Joshua/Yehoshua. The writers of the NT in Matt1:21 attempt to retroproject their Christologies unto Jesus using the etymology of the name. It is used throughout the HB to connote salvation from imminent physical danger but is now widened to include salvation from sin. Christologies aside, through his prophetic function he did save those among his people (the tribe of Israel only) from sin by calling them to he straight path and reforming their mishandling of the law.
More clues as to what his name sounded like can be gleaned from the Peshitta, a Syriac rendition of the Greek NT. The name Isho is used for Jesus which cannot be a transliteration of the Greek Iesous. Syriac sprung from Aramaic, which was spoken in the time of Jesus and most probably his native tongue. The Syriac Isho might have been pronounced the same way, or slightly differently as compared to the Aramaic original. Even in Syriac, the name Isho closely resembles the Arabic Isa. The name, as written in Syriac letters, can be both read as Yeshu and Isho. This might have been a deliberate device by the 2nd century Syriac authors of the Peshitta who sought to represent both Hebrew and Aramaic traditions of Jesus' name. The reason however for Christians to associate Iesous with Yeshua is because of the existence of a Hebrew noun which they think sounds similar and means "salvation"; y'shu'ah. Besides being a feminine word, it isnt even pronounced the same as Yeshua because of the muted first letter "yod".
Recently in Harra (southern Syria and northern Jordan) a safaitic inscription (1st century BCE to 4th century CE) believed to be by desert Christians addresses Jesus as ISA with the triliteral root Ain-Sin-Ya, corresponding to his name in the Quran (al-Jallad). A more fundamental question to ask is why would the Quran re-invent the name of a known figure out of thin air? The Quran is identifying Jesus by the name his audience was familiar with, before, during, and after Islam. The Arabic Isa is a known phenomenon in linguistics called phonosemantic matching. When 2 languages refer to the same thing with a word that is very close phonetically. Isa is a preislamic name which in addition connotes redemption. These 2 factors are what facilitated the identification of the Syriac Isho with the preislamic Isa by Arab Christians. Once more, the character presented in the Quran as Isa cannot be anyone else than the historical, biblical, traditional Jesus. Why would the Quran go out of its way and refer to the main figure of Christianity, while addressing Christians, with a name they never heard of? Pre Islamic Arab Christians adopted Isa because of its etymology as well as close match with the Aramaic Isho. The Quran is addressing these Christians of the Hijaz, not some Christian of the Greco roman world.
The pattern of morphing a name for theological reasons is seen in other cases. For example Jesus' brother is called James. One of the 27 books of the NT was supposedly authored by him. It was opposed by many Christians, including Martin Luther due to its different Christology than Paul's writings, emphasizing the necessity of deeds for salvation. James was part of the small nucleus of Jewish followers of Jesus, centered around Jerusalem, who were in conflict with Paul and who advocated full Torah observance even after Jesus' crucifixion. James' name is in fact, in the original Greek, Jacob. In an effort to eradicate the Jewishness of that movement, the church, in all non-Greek translations of the name have changed Jacob to James.
Similarly Musa's original name isnt Moshe, a word hebrewcised in a way so as to fit a convenient etymology (to pullout/deliver) which is relevant to the context of the story (Musa's deliverance/pulling out from the water). Musa was named in Egypt, by his Egyptian adoptive family according to the HB itself Ex2:10, who would certainly not use the language of their Hebrew slaves for naming one of their own, especially so when the child was to be part of Egyptian nobility. Rabbinic commentaries speculate between several opinions surrounding the event of Musa's appellation, among them that his original name was Munius, later Hebrewcised into Moshe in the HB. It is highly unlikely that Avraham (father of nations) and Moshe (pull out) iterate into the respective originals, since they clearly follow Hebrew etymologies.
At other times, the Hebrew etymology is derived from a foreign name. Adam's whose language could not have been Hebrew, fits the Hebrew word adamah for earth/ground/dust from which he was created
Gen2:7"min ha’adamah". When Adam is preceded by ha/the it means "the man" in a generic sense but always with the earthly origin implicitly intended but if it isnt preceded by the preposition then it refers to a proper name with a meaning directly related to the history of the person in question, as is many times the case in the HB (contrast Gen2:7 with 3:21). The HB also uses ish, enosh, and gever for the human species besides "ha adam".
Although in the HB, Abraham is called Avram/exalted father until his 90s before his name change to Avraham, the Quran calls him since his youth "Ibrahim" 21:60 the Arabic equivalent of "Avraham", and all throughout his life, including after the trial of the sacrifice and consequent blessings, without ever speaking of a name change. "Ibrahim" and "Avraham/father of nations" are both respectively the Arabicised and Hebrewcised forms of the name he had in the language of his native area of Iraq, which was neither Arabic nor Hebrew. The same goes for the Phillistine warrior Goliath/Jalut. What the Jewish scribes did in Abraham's case, was to retrospectively Hebrewcise the native name in a manner that would fit the event of God's promise to his descendants. They simply embellished the story.
Further, it is a known Biblical style to have one and the same character with several names whose convenient etymologies are relevant to the context, or the intent of the writer. A quiet blatant example is that of Sha'ul/Saul which carries a negative connotation, but whom the Quran names Talut, implying height. The Arabic Talut is derived from t-w-l implying a high stature. This name was known since pre-islamic times as mentioned in a poem by al-samaw'al. It could have been one of the names by which that king was known to the Jews. But the name the Biblical scribes gave him was Sha'ul, implying "to ask". This retrospective appellation was aimed at negatively comparing Sha'ul/Saul to both David and Samuel. Samuel was asked of God 1Sam1 while Saul was asked of the people. Then God answers David while Saul is answered with silence 1Sam14:37,28:6. There is a clear play on the questioning motif by the Biblical writers, who, like their predecessors, frowned upon the election of a Benjamite as their king.
