Yonas is a form of Jonah, from Hebrew meaning dove.
Yonas is the Ethiopian and Eritrean form of the biblical name Jonah — Yonah in Hebrew, meaning "dove," the bird that carried the olive branch back to Noah after the flood and became one of the most enduring symbols of peace in world literature and iconography. The Book of Jonah, in which a reluctant prophet is swallowed by a great fish and eventually compelled to fulfill his divine mission, is one of the most narratively vivid texts in the Hebrew Bible; it is read in Jewish communities on Yom Kippur, the holiest day of the year, and is revered across Jewish, Christian, and Islamic traditions. In the Quran, the Prophet Yunus (the Arabic form) gives his name to an entire chapter, Surah Yunus.
In Ethiopian and Eritrean Orthodox Christian communities — among the oldest continuous Christian communities in the world, tracing their faith to the fourth century — Yonas has been a given name for many generations, connected both to the biblical prophet and to the liturgical traditions of the Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo and Eritrean Orthodox Tewahedo churches. The name also appears in Scandinavian contexts as a variant of Jonas, the New Testament Greek rendering of Jonah, common across Sweden, Norway, and Denmark. In the contemporary diaspora, Yonas has traveled with Ethiopian and Eritrean communities to North America, Europe, and Australia, carrying its ancient religious resonance into new cultural contexts.
The Swedish-Ethiopian rapper and songwriter Yonas Yohannes — known professionally as Yonas — brought the name additional visibility. Its three syllables are equally at home in Amharic, Tigrinya, Greek, and English prosody, making it one of those rare names that moves gracefully across the world.