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Summary
- No one named Jackson appears in the Bible, and the name has no Hebrew meaning of its own.
- Jackson is an English surname meaning “son of Jack”; Jack is a medieval pet form of John, from the Hebrew Yohanan, “Yahweh is gracious.”
- Jesus calls Peter “Simon the son of John” (John 1:42; 21:15–17); the King James Version reads “son of Jona.”
- The Bible names people by their fathers with Hebrew ben and Aramaic bar, as in Joshua son of Nun and Bartimaeus.
- Jackson was the 13th most common surname in the 1990 United States census; Andrew Jackson is its best-known bearer.
- As a boys’ first name it reached 14th in the United States in 2021.
Bibliography (Click to show)
- Behind the Name, “Jackson,” “Jack,” “John” and “Jaxon,” with United States popularity figures from Social Security Administration data. https://www.behindthename.com/name/jackson
- Behind the Name, surname “Jackson.” https://surnames.behindthename.com/name/jackson
- Online Etymology Dictionary, “Jack.” https://www.etymonline.com/word/jack
- “Jackson (surname),” Wikipedia, on surname frequency in England and Wales and in the 1990 United States census. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jackson_(surname)
- “Jackson (given name),” Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jackson_(given_name)
- “Textual variants in the Gospel of John,” Wikipedia, on John 1:42. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Textual_variants_in_the_Gospel_of_John
- Scripture quotations: Joshua 1:1; Mark 10:46; Matthew 16:17; John 1:42; 21:15–17; 2 Chronicles 28:12, English Standard Version. References: Matthew 4:21; John 1:40–42 in the King James Version and the SBL Greek New Testament.
