I can see two distinct possible interpretations of this meme. The author of the meme may be truly ignorant of what the disciples’ names really were and genuinely puzzled as to why they sound so perfectly English, or else she may be making a sophisticated point about how the process of translation subtly alters context so as to give modern readers a warped sense of just how foreign the culture was that birthed these men, when viewed from our own time and place in history. Either way, it might be handy to show what these names would have looked like in a New Testament Greek source manuscript, for example, Matthew 10:2-4
τῶν δὲ δώδεκα ἀποστόλων τὰ ὀνόματά ἐστιν ταῦτα· πρῶτος Σίμων ὁ λεγόμενος Πέτρος καὶ Ἀνδρέας ὁ ἀδελφὸς αὐτοῦ, Ἰάκωβος ὁ τοῦ Ζεβεδαίου καὶ Ἰωάννης ὁ ἀδελφὸς αὐτοῦ, Φίλιππος καὶ Βαρθολομαῖος, Θωμᾶς καὶ Μαθθαῖος ὁ τελώνης, Ἰάκωβος ὁ τοῦ Ἁλφαίου καὶ Θαδδαῖος, Σίμων ὁ Καναναῖος καὶ Ἰούδας ὁ Ἰσκαριώτης ὁ καὶ παραδοὺς αὐτόν.
I’ve highlighted eight names in blue, corresponding to the English names Peter, Andrew, James (or Jacob), John, Phillip, Thomas, Matthew, and Simon. They don’t just look different from the English, they are meant to sound different as well. Matthew, for example, sounded more like mat-thah’-yos to the Greek speaking population of the Roman Empire. If you want to dig deeper on any of those names (e.g. Matthew is Strong’s 3156) you will find they are generally thought to be Greek versions of names from Semitic languages, names which sound even more foreign than Greek to monolinguists like myself.
As a name evolves from מַתִּיָה (Hebrew) to Μαθθαῖος (Greek) to Mattheus (Latin) to Mateo (Spanish) or Matthew (English) it is going to sound common to the ears of those who are used to hearing it in their own native language, but will sound foreign when it comes to us transliterated from another tongue. There is no easy fix for this, but it behooves us to at least bear in mind that the inhabitants of the Ancient Near East did not live in a world anything like our own and did not call themselves Peter, John, or James. Or Jesus, for that matter.
