Hi! I live in Norway, and there's an incredibly big amount of very common names starting with Jo: Johan, Johannes, Johanne, Johanna, Jo, Jon, Joakim, Jonatan, Johar, Joseph, Joshua-
Furthermore, there are even more names common in other countries: Joe, Johnny ,Josh ,etc...
But why? Why is there such a huge amount of names starting with "Jo" specifically? And why is it so common to be named one of these names in Norway?
The God of the Jews, of the Christians and of the Mahommedans, introduced himself as "Joe" to Moses, and most of the names you have brought were borrowed from Hebrew through Greek. Joe is how you call their God.
The -el in Nathanael, Israel, Emmanuel, Ezekiel refers to the self-same deity. The -bal in Phoenician names like Hannibal, Hasdrubal or Isabel refers to another deity but in the very same fashion. Thorvald refers accordingly to Thor. The Theo- in Theodore can refer to any deity of your choice.