ZACHARY JORDAN

English vernacular form of the New Testament Greek name Zacharias, a form of Hebrew Zechariah ‘God has remembered’. This was the name of the father of John the Baptist, who underwent a temporary period of dumbness for his lack of faith (Luke 1), and of a more obscure figure, Zacharias son of Barachias, who was slain ‘between the temple and the altar’ (Matthew 23:35; Luke 11:51). In the United States it is familiar as the name of a 19th-century president, Zachary Taylor. Since the 1990s the name has been remarkably popular in the English-speaking world, especially in the United States.

English, French, German, Polish, and Slovenian; Spanish and Hungarian (Jordán): from the Christian baptismal name Jordan. This is taken from the name of the river Jordan (Hebrew Yarden, a derivative of yarad ‘to go down’, i.e. to the Dead Sea). At the time of the Crusades it was common practice for crusaders and pilgrims to bring back flasks of water from the river in which John the Baptist had baptized people, including Christ himself, and to use it in the christening of their own children. As a result Jordan became quite a common personal name.