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Japanese No one named Jackson appears in the Bible. Jackson is an English surname meaning “son of Jack,” and Jack is a medieval pet form of John, from the Hebrew Yohanan, “Yahweh is gracious.” The name therefore amounts to “son of John,” a phrase the New Testament does use: Jesus calls Peter “Simon, son of John” (John 21:15).
Is Jackson in the Bible?
The name Jackson does not occur in any book of the Bible or in any translation. It is an English surname, and Jack, the name it is built on, is recorded in England by 1218, more than a thousand years after the New Testament was written.
The Bible does name people the way Jackson once named a man, by his father. Hebrew uses ben, “son of,” as in “Joshua the son of Nun” (Joshua 1:1). Aramaic uses bar, which survives in names such as Bartimaeus, “the son of Timaeus” (Mark 10:46), and in Simon Bar-Jonah (Matthew 16:17). In Hebrew, “son of John” would be ben Yohanan, and the Old Testament names men described that way, such as Azariah the son of Johanan, one of the chiefs of Ephraim (2 Chronicles 28:12).
A blessing card for Jackson
Jackson
means son of Jack
English surname, from Jack
Not in the Bible
When they had finished eating, Jesus asked Simon Peter, “Simon son of John, do you love Me more than these?” “Yes, Lord,” he answered, “You know I love You.” Jesus replied, “Feed My lambs.”
John 21:15 Berean Standard Bible
Jackson, may the LORD bless you and keep you. Numbers 6:24
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Who is called “son of John” in the Bible?
The best-known “son of John” in Scripture is Simon Peter. When Andrew brings his brother to Jesus, Jesus looks at him and says, “You are Simon the son of John. You shall be called Cephas” (John 1:42). After the resurrection he asks him three times, “Simon, son of John, do you love me?” (John 21:15–17). Modern translations follow the oldest Greek manuscripts here, which give the father’s name as John. Later manuscripts, followed by the King James Version, read Jona or Jonas, and Matthew 16:17 calls Peter “Simon Bar-Jonah.”
What does Jackson mean?
Jackson means “son of Jack.” Behind the Name derives Jack from Jackin, earlier Jankin, a medieval pet form of John, and allows that the French Jacques, a form of Jacob, may have had some early influence. The Online Etymology Dictionary thinks the name probably came through Jacques, but notes that in English Jack “always has been regarded as a familiar form of John.”
John is the English form of the Hebrew Yohanan, “Yahweh is gracious,” which reached English through the Greek Iōannēs and the Latin Iohannes. In the New Testament it is the name of John the Baptist and of the apostle John, the son of Zebedee (Matthew 4:21). Jackson has no Hebrew meaning of its own; any Hebrew meaning it carries comes through John.
Where does the surname Jackson come from?
Jackson is a patronymic surname of English origin: it first named a man as the son of someone called Jack. It became one of the most common surnames in the English-speaking world. In 1980 it was the 24th most common surname in England and Wales, and in the 1990 United States census it was the 13th most frequently reported. Its best-known bearer is Andrew Jackson (1767–1845), the seventh president of the United States.
As a first name, Jackson is a transferred use of the surname. It has been given to American boys since at least 1880, when it ranked 244th, and it rose steadily from the 1990s to 14th place in 2021. It ranked 36th in 2025. Jaxon, a variant spelling, reached 39th in 2018.
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