Jonas Family History

English, German, French, Dutch, Polish, Lithuanian, Sorbian, and Jewish (Ashkenazic); Czech (Jonáš); Slovak (mainly Jonáš, also Jónáš, Jónás); Hungarian (Jónás): from a personal name which is a variant of the Biblical name Jonah, Hebrew Yonah meaning ‘dove’ in Hebrew.

In the book of the Bible which bears his name, Jonah was appointed by God to preach repentance to the city of Nineveh but tried to flee instead to Tarshish. On the voyage to Tarshish, a great storm arose and Jonah was thrown overboard by his shipmates to appease God's wrath, swallowed by a great fish, and delivered by it on the shores of Nineveh.

This story exercised a powerful hold on the popular imagination in medieval Europe, and the personal name was a relatively common choice. The Hebrew name and its reflexes in other languages (for example Yiddish Yoyne) have been popular Jewish personal names for generations.

In North America, this surname is also an altered form of the Polish variant Jonasz. Compare Yonas.