Where the James name comes from

James is a given name that became a surname, and few names in English have travelled further to get here. It arrives through the Old French James, from the Vulgar Latin Iacomus, an altered pronunciation of the Latin Iacobus, from the Greek Iakobos, from the Hebrew Yaaqov. That Hebrew name is built on the word for the heel of the foot. Jacob, Jacques, Iago, Hamish, Seamus and Santiago are the same name again, each one wearing the clothes of the language that took it in.