It's a secret. No one knows his name.
Cited passages
His eyes are a flame of fire, and on his head are many crowns. He has names written and a name written which no one knows but he himself.
What was Jesus H. Christ's real name?
- Jesus & the Gospels
- Historical detail
- Old Testament vs. New Testament
- Isaiah
- Jeremiah
- Matthew
- Mark
- Luke
- John
- Revelation
The tension
The New Testament gives Jesus a long string of names and titles — Jesus, Jesus Christ, Emmanuel, the Word, Son of Man, Son of the Highest, Son of David, Son of God, Holy One of God, Lord Our Righteousness, Alpha and Omega, the Amen, Lion of Judah, Faithful and True, Word of God, King of Kings, the Morning Star, Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace — and Revelation 19:12 says no one knows his real name at all. The 'contradiction' as posed is largely a category error (these are titles, not legal names), but the underlying problem — competing Christological titles drawn from different prophetic streams — is real.
Proposed answers
People have answered this in several ways; GEBible presents them as equal peers.
Jesus
The angel of the LORD appeared unto him in a dream, saying, Joseph, thou son of David, fear not to take unto thee Mary thy wife: for that which is conceived in her is of the Holy Ghost. And she shall bring forth a son, and thou shalt call his name JESUS. Matthew 1:21 Thou shalt conceive in thy womb, and bring forth a son, and shalt call his name JESUS. Luke 1:31
Cited passages
She shall give birth to a son. You shall name him Jesus, for it is he who shall save his people from their sins.”
Behold, you will conceive in your womb and give birth to a son, and shall name him ‘Jesus.’
Jesus Christ
Grace and truth came by Jesus Christ. John 1:17
Cited passages
For the law was given through Moses. Grace and truth were realized through Jesus Christ.
Emmanuel
Cited passages
“Behold, the virgin shall be with child, and shall give birth to a son. They shall call his name Immanuel;” which is, being interpreted, “God with us.”
The Word
In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. John 1:1 (The Gospel of John doesn't come right out and say who "the word" is, but all Christians believe it's referring to Jesus.)
Cited passages
In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.
The Son of man
Cited passages
Jesus said to him, “The foxes have holes, and the birds of the sky have nests, but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay his head.”
The Son of the Highest
He shall be great, and shall be called the Son of the Highest. Luke 1:32
Cited passages
He will be great and will be called the Son of the Most High. The Lord God will give him the throne of his father David,
The son of David
Cited passages
As Jesus passed by from there, two blind men followed him, calling out and saying, “Have mercy on us, son of David!”
The Son of God
That holy thing which shall be born of thee shall be called the Son of God. Luke 1:35
Cited passages
The angel answered her, “The Holy Spirit will come on you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you. Therefore also the holy one who is born from you will be called the Son of God.
The Holy One of God
Cited passages
Immediately there was in their synagogue a man with an unclean spirit, and he cried out, saying, “Ha! What do we have to do with you, Jesus, you Nazarene? Have you come to destroy us? I know you who you are: the Holy One of God!”
THE LORD OUR RIGHTEOUSNESS
He shall be called, THE LORD OUR RIGHTEOUSNESS. Jeremiah 23:6
Cited passages
In his days Judah will be saved, and Israel will dwell safely. This is his name by which he will be called: Yahweh our righteousness.
Alpha and Omega
I am Alpha and Omega. Revelation 1:8
Cited passages
“I am the Alpha and the Omega,” says the Lord God, “who is and who was and who is to come, the Almighty.”
The Amen
Cited passages
“To the angel of the assembly in Laodicea write: “The Amen, the Faithful and True Witness, the Beginning of God’s creation, says these things:
The Lion of the tribe of Juda, the Root of David
Cited passages
One of the elders said to me, “Don’t weep. Behold, the Lion who is of the tribe of Judah, the Root of David, has overcome: he who opens the book and its seven seals.”
Faithful and True
Cited passages
I saw the heaven opened, and behold, a white horse, and he who sat on it is called Faithful and True. In righteousness he judges and makes war.
The Word of God
Cited passages
He is clothed in a garment sprinkled with blood. His name is called “The Word of God.”
King of Kings and Lord of Lords
He hath on his vesture and on his thigh a name written, KING OF KINGS, AND LORD OF LORDS. Revelation 19:16 (See: What does Jesus have written on his testicles?)
Cited passages
He has on his garment and on his thigh a name written, “KING OF KINGS, AND LORD OF LORDS.”
The bright and morning star
I am the root and the offspring of David, and the bright and morning star. Revelation 22:16
Cited passages
I, Jesus, have sent my angel to testify these things to you for the assemblies. I am the root and the offspring of David, the Bright and Morning Star.”
Wonderful, Counsellor, The mighty God, The everlasting Father, the Prince of Peace
Cited passages
For a child is born to us. A son is given to us; and the government will be on his shoulders. His name will be called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace.
Examining the tension
What follows is one scholar’s way of reading this disagreement — a critical-historical view that often concludes the texts genuinely disagree. It draws on the peer-reviewed sources listed below and stands as one position among the answers above, presented for transparency, not as GEBible’s position.
How critical scholarship weighs this: Usually considered reconciled
This summarizes where critical scholarship tends to land on this tension — a report on the field’s center of gravity, not GEBible’s own ruling.
The SAB's framing is half-joke, half-serious, and the joke should not obscure the serious half. Posed as a question about Jesus's actual legal name, the answer is mundane: Yeshua bar Yosef of Nazareth, a Galilean Jew. The Greek Iēsous transliterates the Hebrew/Aramaic Yeshua (a shortened post-exilic form of Yehoshua, 'YHWH saves'), and the everyday Galilean Aramaic form was likely the clipped Yeshu. This is the historical position John P. Meier defends in A Marginal Jew and Dale Allison in Constructing Jesus — historical, uncontroversial, and a useful corrective to the SAB's mock-confusion. 'Christ' is not a surname but a title (Hebrew mashiach, Greek christos, 'anointed one'); 'Emmanuel' is a programmatic name Matthew imports from Isaiah 7:14 (Davies and Allison note the citation is shaped to the LXX's parthenos and is theological signposting, not a record of what anyone called Jesus in daily life). So as stated, the contradiction is largely a category error: a legal name and a stack of honorifics do not strictly compete.
Where the question turns scholarly-interesting is the proliferation of Christological titles. Larry Hurtado in Lord Jesus Christ and Martin Hengel in Studies in Early Christology document how the earliest Jesus communities accumulated titles from multiple Jewish prophetic and apocalyptic streams: the Davidic Messiah (Son of David, Lion of Judah, Root of David), the apocalyptic Son of Man (Daniel 7), the Mosaic Prophet, the Suffering Servant of Isaiah 53, the pre-existent Wisdom-Logos of John 1, the throne-sharer of Psalm 110, and the divine warrior of Revelation. Each title carries distinct theological freight. Calling Jesus 'Son of David' makes a claim about lineage and royal legitimacy; calling him 'the Word' makes a claim about pre-existence and divine agency; 'Lamb that was slain' and 'Lion of Judah' pull in opposite directions tonally even within Revelation. Raymond Brown's An Introduction to New Testament Christology maps these title by title and concludes the assemblage forms not a unified system but a set of overlapping vocabularies the early church found useful for different rhetorical purposes.
Revelation supplies the one place where the text is at war with itself rather than merely various. Revelation 19:12 — 'he had a name written that no one knew but he himself' — sits one verse before 19:13 ('his name is called The Word of God') and a few chapters before 22:16 ('the bright and morning star'). David Aune in the WBC Revelation 17-22 reads 19:12 against ancient Near Eastern and Greco-Roman name-magic, in which knowledge of a divinity's secret name confers power over it; the hidden name is a deliberate apocalyptic motif of inviolable sovereignty. The friction is real: within a few verses the seer both withholds and publishes the name. That is an internal tension Revelation never resolves, and it is not dissolved by the category-error point.
Isaiah 9:6 adds a further wrinkle. Joseph Blenkinsopp in the AB Isaiah 1-39 reads 'Wonderful Counsellor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace' as a royal enthronement oracle, the throne-names following the Egyptian convention of bestowing a string of grand titulary on a new king (the likeliest referent being Hezekiah). The Christian reading projects these honorifics onto Jesus retrospectively; the names originally belonged to an Iron Age Judean monarch and were transferred to a first-century Galilean by later interpretation.
Where the critical reading lands: the headline 'contradiction' is overstated (titles are not names), but two genuine items remain — Revelation's internal known-versus-unknown name tension, and the historically demonstrable fact that 'Jesus's' identity was assembled from a portfolio of pre-existing prophetic-royal titles drawn from incompatible streams.
Sources for this reading