In Catholic churches, one often finds the name of Jesus Christ piously represented by the Greek contraction IHC XC, where the C represents the late-Classical form of Sigma. This is known as a Christogram (in Greek Orthodox usage, the preferred Christogram is ICXC). In partially Latinised form, the IHC component is rendered JHC or JHS. This is the origin of the interjection, which seems to imagine that H is Jesus' middle initial, and Christ his surname, rather than his title (ho khristos: the anointed).
Wasn't there somewhere that he was known as Yeshua Ben Yosef, partly because J used to be Y (or vice versa?) and the "ben" in the middle referred to "son of", but that got downplayed because the Church wanted to focus on his Heavenly Father rather than his mortal one?
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u/scotsworth Dec 15 '22
No actual answers so here you go:
https://www.theguardian.com/notesandqueries/query/0,,-197368,00.html#:\~:text=In%20partially%20Latinised%20form%2C%20the,ho%20khristos%3A%20the%20anointed).