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Ἰωάννης

John

Thayer's lists 5 entries for ‘John’ fuller range ↓

G2491 Strong's Greek
Iōánnēs Transliteration
/ee-o-an'-nace/ Pronunciation
Usage in the GNT 134 appearances

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About this entry

At a glance — auto-summarized from this page’s data, not written by a person. Every figure links to its source below. This summary describes the numbers; it doesn’t interpret them.

Ιωαννης — transliterated Iōánnēs — is a Greek name carrying the sense “John.” Debuting at Matthew 3:1, it then recurs through the corpus. The Greek New Testament uses it across 131 verses — common. Each statement above links to its evidence; the full detail follows below.

Gloss history

Strong's 1890 vs modern scholarship

Strong's · 1890
John
Modern gloss
John
Strong's 1890 agrees
Strong's 1890 and current Thayer scholarship align on this entry's primary sense — a good signal that the gloss above is unambiguous and stable. Download share card

About this word

Strong's G2491 catalogs a Greek word from the Greek New Testament.

These counts are not copied from any lexicon or concordance. They are computed here, from the morphology-tagged Greek New Testament. What Lemma adds →

131
distinct verses
The word appears in 131 distinct verses.
7 / 27
NT books
The word appears in 7 of 27 New Testament books.
Matthew 3:1
first appearance
The earliest occurrence is in Matthew 3:1.
Revelation 22:8
last appearance
The latest occurrence is in Revelation 22:8.
#125
by frequency
Top 250 most frequent Greek words (rank 125 of 5,347 Greek words by occurrence).

View all 131 occurrences in the concordance →


Most concentrated in

By section of the New Testament

  • Gospels 102 · 78%
  • Acts 24 · 18%
  • Pauline Epistles 1 · 1%
  • General Epistles 0 · 0%
  • Revelation 4 · 3%

By traditional corpus

Conventional, traditional groupings — biblical authorship is debated, so this is a traditional corpus grouping, not an authorship claim. Some books belong to more than one corpus (Luke is in both the Gospels and the Lukan corpus, and so on), so these shares overlap and need not total 100%. Each figure is a share of the word’s 131 distinct verses.

  • Gospels 102 verses · 78%
  • Lukan (Luke–Acts) 54 verses · 41%
  • Johannine 26 verses · 20%
  • Revelation 4 verses · 3%
  • Pauline corpus 1 verse · 1%

How translations render this word

Counts come from each version’s own published word-to-Strong’s tagging or interlinear alignment — an approximate guide to how each version renders this word, not a word-level alignment the data otherwise carries. Because each total is that version’s own tagged count, the per-version totals vary from one another and need not match the appearance or distinct-verse counts above. These counts may also differ from a printed concordance because Lemma counts each distinctly tagged rendering and does not collapse phrase taggings into a single head-word total. This is a fixed set of word-tagged versions (KJV, ASV, BSB, ULT) and does not change with the reading translation you choose elsewhere. Each version’s license is shown beside its name below (and on Sources).

  • King James Version: John 129×, John's 2×
  • American Standard Version: John 121×
  • Berean Standard Bible: John 115×, John’s 13×, Than john 2×
  • unfoldingWord Literal Text: John 131×, Son of john 3×

King James Version Public Domain

Renders G2491 across 133 tagged occurrences — most commonly:

  • “John” 129×
  • “John's” 2×

Plus 2 renderings that appear only once — usually multi-word phrases or single function words the recovered tagging swept in, not distinct renderings.

American Standard Version Public Domain

Renders G2491 across 130 tagged occurrences — most commonly:

  • “John” 121×

Plus 9 renderings that appear only once — usually multi-word phrases or single function words the recovered tagging swept in, not distinct renderings.

Berean Standard Bible Public Domain

Renders G2491 across 131 tagged occurrences — most commonly:

  • “John” 115×
  • “John’s” 13×
  • “Than john” 2×

Plus 1 rendering that appears only once — usually multi-word phrases or single function words the recovered tagging swept in, not distinct renderings. Not rendered by a distinct English word in 4 further occurrences.

unfoldingWord Literal Text CC BY-SA 4.0

Renders G2491 across 136 tagged occurrences — most commonly:

  • “John” 131×
  • “Son of john” 3×

Plus 2 renderings that appear only once — usually multi-word phrases or single function words the recovered tagging swept in, not distinct renderings.


Senses in Thayer's

The 5 senses Thayer's distinguishes for this word, in lexicon order (not ranked by frequency or importance). The full entry — with sub-senses — is in the Lexicon Entry tab.

  1. John = "Jehovah is a gracious giver"
  2. John the Baptist was the son of Zacharias and Elisabeth…
  3. John the apostle…
  4. John surnamed Mark, the companion of Barnabas and Paul. Acts 12:12
  5. John a certain man, a member of the Sanhedrin Acts 5:6

Word origin

Derived from יוחנן (Yôwchânân) (H3110) — Johanan.

Part of speech: Noun Masculine

Of hebrew origin [ H3110 ]; Joannes (that is Jochanan ) the name of four Israelites : - John.

— Strong’s Exhaustive Concordance (1890), public domain.


Forms in the corpus

The 5 distinct written forms G2491 takes in the Greek New Testament, most frequent first — each parse links to that case’s occurrences in the concordance.

Form Parsing Example Uses
Ἰωάννης Iōánnēs Noun, Nominative, Singular, Masculine Matthew 3:1 53
Ἰωάννου Iōánnou Noun, Genitive, Singular, Masculine Matthew 9:14 39
Ἰωάννην Iōánnēn Noun, Accusative, Singular, Masculine Matthew 3:13 37
Ἰωάννῃ Iōánnē Noun, Dative, Singular, Masculine Matthew 11:4 3
Ἰωάννει Iōánnei Noun, Dative, Singular, Masculine Luke 7:18 2

Same root — word family

Other Thayer's entries built from the same root as G2491, grouped by Strong’s listed origin. These share a root / origin per the lexicon — not necessarily a shared meaning. Each links to that word’s own entry.

Derives from

Proper names from this root

People and places named from this root — a name, not an additional meaning of the word.

Compare all same-root words → Showing 4 of 5 — not the complete family. 4 of the same-root words are proper names (people or places). They share a root, not necessarily a meaning.


Bible dictionary

Public-domain dictionary articles matched to this entry by name (John). A biblical name can be shared by more than one person or place, so an article may treat several.

Easton's Bible Dictionary · M. G. Easton, 1897

(1.) One who, with Annas and Caiaphas, sat in judgment on the apostles Peter and John (Acts 4:6). He was of the kindred of the high priest; otherwise unknown.

(2.) The Hebrew name of Mark (q.v.). He is designated by this name in the acts of the Apostles (12:12, 25; 13:5, 13; 15:37).

(3.) THE APOSTLE, brother of James the "Greater" (Matt. 4:21; 10:2; Mark 1:19; 3:17; 10:35). He was one, probably the younger, of the sons of Zebedee (Matt. 4:21) and Salome (Matt. 27:56; comp. Mark 15:40), and was born at Bethsaida. His father was apparently a man of some wealth (comp. Mark 1:20; Luke 5:3; John 19:27). He was doubtless trained in all that constituted the ordinary education of Jewish youth. When he grew up he followed the occupation of a fisherman on the Lake of Galilee. When John the Baptist began his ministry in the wilderness of Judea, John, with many others, gathered round him, and was deeply influenced by his teaching. There he heard the announcement, "Behold the Lamb of God," and forthwith, on the invitation of Jesus, became a disciple and ranked among his followers (John 1:36, 37) for a time. He and his brother then returned to their former avocation, for how long is uncertain. Jesus again called them (Matt. 4: 21; Luke 5:1-11), and now they left all and permanently attached themselves to the company of his disciples. He became one of the innermost circle (Mark 5:37; Matt. 17:1; 26:37; Mark 13:3). He was the disciple whom Jesus loved. In zeal and intensity of character he was a "Boanerges" (Mark 3:17). This spirit once and again broke out (Matt. 20:20-24; Mark 10:35-41; Luke 9:49, 54). At the betrayal he and Peter follow Christ afar off, while the others betake themselves to hasty flight (John 18:15). At the trial he follows Christ into the council chamber, and thence to the praetorium (18:16, 19, 28) and to the place of crucifixion (19:26, 27). To him and Peter, Mary first conveys tidings of the resurrection (20:2), and they are the first to go and see what her strange words mean. After the resurrection he and Peter again return to the Sea of Galilee, where the Lord reveals himself to them (21:1, 7). We find Peter and John frequently after this together (Acts 3:1; 4:13). John remained apparently in Jerusalem as the leader of the church there (Acts 15:6; Gal. 2:9). His subsequent history is unrecorded. He was not there, however, at the time of Paul's last visit (Acts 21:15-40). He appears to have retired to Ephesus, but at what time is unknown. The seven churches of Asia were the objects of his special care (Rev. 1:11). He suffered under persecution, and was banished to Patmos (1:9); whence he again returned to Ephesus, where he died, probably about A.D. 98, having outlived all or nearly all the friends and companions even of his maturer years. There are many interesting traditions regarding John during his residence at Ephesus, but these cannot claim the character of historical truth.

Smith's Bible Dictionary · William Smith, 1863

the same name as Johanan, a contraction of Jehoanan, Jehovah's gift .

+ One of the high priest's family, who, with Annas and Caiaphas, sat in judgment upon the apostles Peter and John. (Acts 6:6) + The Hebrew name of the evangelist Mark. (Acts 12:12,25; 13:5,13; 15:37)

Hitchcock's Bible Names Dictionary · Roswell D. Hitchcock, 1869

the grace or mercy of the Lord

Classic public-domain reference works; full attribution on Sources.

Reading settings

Reading text

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Old Testament
Old Testament edition

Read the OT as the Masoretic Hebrew (MT) or the Greek Septuagint (LXX).

English shown for the Greek Septuagint (in the Hebrew ↔ Greek comparison).

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