A Jerusalem high priest called Jesus swapped his name for Jason in the middle of a fight over his office, and Josephus wrote it down in one flat line. April 26 goes to the 1,050,360 American boys who came after.
No founder or formal establishment record has been identified for National Jason Day. The observance circulates through online day-listing sites and social posts with an April 26 date.
Jason is two names that ended up sharing a spelling. The Online Etymology Dictionary traces one of them to the Greek Iason, son of Aeson and leader of the Argonauts, and the other to the Hebrew Yehoshua, a common name among Hellenistic Jews. In its words, the two "were somewhat merged in Christian Greek."
American parents made the name their own much later. The Social Security Administration's century table counts 1,050,360 American boys given the name at birth. That is the 26th most common boys' name of the last hundred years, and most of them arrived in a single stretch.
The day set aside for them is the least documented thing about the name. Every route back to who first put Jason on the calendar ends at listing sites copying one another.
The first Jason was a prince with a price on his inheritance. Britannica's account has him sent away as a boy to the centaur Chiron, after his half-uncle Pelias seized Iolcos. When he came back for what was his, Pelias named the price: the Golden Fleece.
He got the fleece with the help of Medea, whom he married. He deserted her later, and that desertion became the subject of Euripides' Medea. The name outlasted the story and went to work on real people.
By the second century BCE the name was doing different work. Josephus records a Jerusalem high priest, brother of Onias, in one flat line: "This Jesus changed his name to Jason." The sentence sits inside a dispute over who would hold the high priesthood.
Two centuries later a man of that name appears in Thessalonica, with a mob at his door looking for Paul. The Orthodox Church in America calls its Apostle Jason a native of Tarsus and the first Christian in that city, later its bishop. It cites John Chrysostom for the view that the two men are one, and places him on Corfu in the year 63.
Jason first appears in the Social Security Administration's decade tables in the 1960s, at 88th among American boys' names. The next decade took it near the top, and every decade since has moved it back down. By the 2020s table it had dropped to 141st.
The observance is the newest and thinnest layer on all of this. It has a date and a name, and no filing behind either. The name was old long before the calendar had a square for it.
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WHY THIS DAY MATTERS
About 30,000 applications a year, judged by four people.
Slate reported in 2025 that the best known registry of unofficial national days is a private business, vetting entries through a four-person committee that votes anonymously. It fields about 30,000 applications a year, and companies can pay to have a day created for a product.
Behind the Name traces Iason to iasis, meaning healing, and from there to the verb iaomai, to heal. That gives Jason a plain meaning rather than only a sound.
GreekReporter describes the Greek name day as the feast of the saint a person is named for, a celebration that historically took the place of the birthday. The American day honors the name itself, with no saints' calendar standing behind the date.
GOOD TO KNOW
Iason and Iasonas keep their name day on April 29, when the Greek Orthodox Church commemorates the apostles Jason and Sosipater
the Orthodox Church in America commemorates the same two apostles a day earlier, on April 28
an open house is laid out for anyone who drops in, and bringing a gift is expected
over the past four decades the birthday has gained ground, and younger Greeks tend to set the name day aside
GOOD TO KNOW
Behind the Name records that Jason was not used in England until after the Protestant Reformation.
In Acts 17, the city magistrates of Thessalonica took a surety payment from Jason and the others before releasing them.
The Greek Orthodox Archdiocese points to a church there from the first centuries whose inscriptions mention the saints by name.
In the same passage where Josephus records the name change, the rivals of the new high priest asked the king for permission to build a gymnasium in Jerusalem.
Romans 16:21 carries the greeting quoted by the Greek Orthodox Archdiocese: "Jason and Sosipater my kinsmen greet you."
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No. It is an unofficial observance with no legal standing located, so it is a normal working day.
COLOPHON
John hides a god's name inside it, and Hebrew keeps a longer form still, Yəhôḥānān. The day belongs to living Johns, not to the Baptist, whose older feast four churches keep as Johnmas.
On Mount Hor, Moses took the priestly vestments off his brother Aaron and put them on Aaron's son. National Aaron Day lands on a name the reference books still refuse to translate.
Jacob turns up twice on the same government list: thirtieth under its own spelling, first as James, because Latin speakers split one Hebrew name in two and English kept both roads open. March 23 is the day for one of them.
