Ean

Ean is the Gaelic-Manx form of John. Other Gaelic forms of John are Seán (Irish) and Ian (Scottish) while the Welsh people use Evan. But wait, who are the Manx people exactly? They are the folks who live on the Isle of Man in the Irish Sea between Ireland and the United Kingdom. Like Irish-Gaelic and Scottish-Gaelic, Manx is another Celtic language stemming from the Gaelic branch (while Breton, Cornish and Welsh come from the Brythonic branch). Although the Celts date back to the Iron Age on the Isle of Man, many Celtic Druids from Britannia found shelter there during the Roman occupation of England in the first centuries A.D. Later in the 5th century, Gaels from Ireland, mostly Christian missionaries, brought the Gaelic branch of the Celtic language to the island, and from there the Manx-Gaelic language developed in isolation (which is why it’s distinctly different than the Irish or Scottish-Gaelic languages). You can see how close the Manx Ean is to the Scottish Ian – which became ethnic forms of John in their own native tongue. The name John was popularized throughout the British Isles after the Crusades (a series of religious wars between the 11th and 13th centuries). Many Christian knights and peasants throughout Western Europe made their way east to the Holy Lands in order to restore Christian access to the sacred city of Jerusalem and to liberate the Eastern Christians from invading and occupying Turkish Sunni Muslims. When the so-called pilgrim-warriors returned home from their crusades reinvigorated by their faith, they brought the Biblical name John back to England (anglicized from the Hebrew Yochanan and the Greek Ioannes meaning “God is gracious”). From that point on, there was no stopping the popularity of this name throughout Western Europe – and every language had their own version of the name. It was the Manx people we can thank for giving us Ean.