Yohanan יוֹחָנָן (Yôḥānān), sometimes transcribed as Johanan, is a Hebrew male given name that can also appear in the longer form of יְהוֹחָנָן (Yəhôḥānān), meaning "YHWH is gracious".
The name is ancient, recorded as the name of Johanan, high priest of the Second Temple around 400 BCE.
The presence of an h, not found in the Greek adaptation, shows awareness of the Hebrew origin.
The anglicized form John makes its appearance in Middle English, from the mid-12th century, as a direct adaptation from Medieval Latin Johannes, the Old French being Jean.
[1] The form Johanan, even closer to the Hebrew original than Latin Johannes, is customarily used in English-language translations of the Hebrew Bible (as opposed to John being used in English translations of the New Testament), in a tradition going back to Wycliffe's Bible, which uses John when translating from the Greek (e.g. of John the Baptist in Mark 1:4), but Johannan when translating from the Hebrew (as in Jeremiah 40:8).