Can Jack be a nickname for Jonathan?

[bluebabydinosaur]

I know Jack is a nickname for John but do you think that Jack can be a nickname for Jonathan or is that too much of a stretch? Your thoughts would be appreciated. Many thanks

John F. Kennedy was also known as Jack!

These days no one gets to know someone called John and then starts to call them Jack as a natural progression.

Not in the same way Peter and David will be shortened to Pete and Dave.

So if you fancy Jack as a day to day name just use it from the off, even if birth certificate name is. Jonathon.

If you use Jonathan, kids in school might shorten it to anything from ‘J’ to Jonno or Jon. You might have to introduce ‘Jonty’.

No. Jonathan is a lovely name why shorten it to “jack”?

John and Jonathan do not share the same root name, and they are not basically the same name. They are not comparable to Sophie/Sophia, for example, which are clearly from the same roots.

John comes from Iohannes, the Latin form of Ioannes, which is the Grek form of the Hebrew name Yochanan. It means God is gracious.

Jonathan comes from Ionathan, which is a Latin and Greek form of the Hebrew name Yehonatan (or simplified as Yonatan). It means God has given.

Any source which says they share the same roots, are incorrect, but hey, I'm a Hebrew speaker, so what do I know?!

To give examples of names which do share the same Hebrew roots, James and Jacob do, as do Mary and Miriam.

Jack is a nickname for John. My uncle Jack is John on his birth certificate but has been Jack all his like.

Sorry - x post about a million people!

Nicknames don’t have to have any connection with a given name.
My nickname was Spike.
My ex-FIL was registered as Henry he was always called Bill!

John and Jonathan do not have the same root, but Jonathan and Nathan do.
Jack traditionally is a nn for John, but can also be a form of James. Jacqueline is the feminine form of James.

If you are going to call the baby Jack, you might as well put Jack on the bc.

Happy to be corrected by an expert, Cake, but why the sarcasm? Just own your expertise.

John and Jonathan strangely don’t share the same root, hence why Jack can be a nickname for John (although it’s not widely used these days) but isn’t usually for Jonathan.

Regarding John -> Jack, happy to be corrected but I believe it goes all the way back to the Norman conquest and a lot of back and forth between Old French and Old English.

John was Jen in Old French, or Jan in Old Dutch. In Old English ‘kin’ was used an affectionate suffix (similarly to how we’d use ‘ie’ these days e.g. Jack became Jackie). So we have Jen or John becoming Jankin, which due to French pronunciation eventually becomes Jackin and somehow along the way is shortened to Jack.

Henry to Harry is a similarly dull tale!

Not dull at all. Names are fascinating.

No.

It's dumb enough that for some reason Jack is a nickname for John...

Why not just name him Jack? All the Jack's I've known have been great while the Jonathan's were pushover forgettable types.