The Etymology of Matthew: From Palestinian Mattay through Greek and Latin to the European Languages

This study investigates the Semitic etymology of the name Matthew by examining the Hebrew anthroponym מַתִּתְיָהוּ Mattityāhū, its relationship to shorter Semitic forms, and the history of transmission that produced the modern South Slavic names Matej and Mateja and related European forms. The analysis employs historical-comparative, morphological, and onomastic methods and draws on biblical and epigraphic Hebrew, Palestinian Jewish onomastics of the Second Temple period, Ugaritic and Phoenician-Punic material, West Semitic names preserved in Babylonian cuneiform sources, and Greek, Syriac, Latin, Old Church Slavonic, and later European attestations. Particular distinctions are drawn among the nominal stems mattan- and mattat-, the bound element mattit-, the Yahwistic elements -yāhū and -yāh, and the Palestinian anthroponym מתי mty, reconstructed as Mattay. Phoenician MTT and Punic MTNT constitute direct lexical parallels to Hebrew מַתַּת mattat “gift,” but they illuminate the historical development of the element mattit- in Mattityāhū only indirectly. Palestinian epigraphic attestations demonstrate that mty functioned as a masculine personal name in the relevant chronological and geographical setting. On the basis of epigraphic, morphological, geographical, and textual evidence, the study concludes that Mattay is the most probable immediate Semitic antecedent of Greek Μαθθαῖος/Ματθαῖος, although this relationship is not confirmed by a bilingual attestation of the same historical bearer. The study strictly distinguishes the Greek anthroponymic types Μαθθαῖος, Μαθθίας, and Ματταθίας and their respective Latin and European continuations. The western branch of transmission proceeds through Latin Matthaeus, whereas South Slavic Matej is primarily associated with the Greek–Old Church Slavonic tradition and does not require Latin as an intermediary. Serbian Mateja belongs to the same broader onomastic tradition and is fully integrated into the declension of masculine names ending in -a, but its direct diachronic development from Matej is not historically documented. The traditional gloss “gift of God” is semantically grounded in the theophoric family Mattityāhū/Mattityāh, but it does not constitute a direct morphological analysis of the modern forms Matthew or Matej. Keywords: Matthew; Matej; Mateja; מַתִּתְיָהוּ; Mattityāhū; Mattay; Hebrew anthroponymy; Semitic etymology; theophoric names; hypocoristic forms; Μαθθαῖος; Old Church Slavonic; European transmission