Because my sister thought "Peter Gregory" was horrifyingly strange, I am enjoying going through the synaxarion on hand and further horrifying her with the thought that I
might name my child after one of these saints. (For her reaction to "Peter Gregory"—which is a darn sight more normal than "Crispin Jarlath" (cool, but I don't think I would do that to a child)—this sister is disqualified from having her opinion count on naming any of my children. She also thinks pretty much any Greek name is weird.
Her children's names, naturally, are "normal"—except to anyone besides her, which makes the whole thing funnier.)
However, as I was going through the pages, making fun of the "weird" names, I realized that these were people who were probably praying for me right now. Also, some of the "weirder" ones started to grow on me (in bold).
Fulgentius
Theopemptos
Abelard
Onouphrios
Phosterios
Sais
Agathon
Shemaiah
Abo
Polyefktos
Dometianos
Galacteon
Remigius
Pansophios
Perodzhavra *
Pevsippos, Elasippos, Mesippos, and Neonilla
Danax
Leobardus
Thyrsos
Babylas
|
Lupicinus
Barsimaeus
Bretanion
Medula
Auxentios
Xenophon
Paladios
Hyperechius
Abibus
Paregorius
Sarbelos
Bebaia
Mucius **
Ashot
Pitirim
Acepsimas
Aphrates
Hippolytus
Adelgonda
Tryphaenes
|
* still unable to pronounce this one at all, or pretty much any Georgian name, except Khahaber, thanks to knowing Fr. Khahaber |
** extra fun teasing my sister with this one, which she managed to take seriously for quite a long while
|
I had so much pleasure going through just January, I thought I should stop and savor them rather than rushing through the entire year. Yes, I
could just look at September, but there's no reason to have a shared birthday/nameday, is there? Although September 19
does have Dorymedon, Seguanos, and Yaroslav, and babies are notoriously on schedule.
3 comments:
I love Crispin. How about Crispin Gregory?
Giggling at Galacteon - I think that's futuristic, don't you. And ay yi yi Mucius.
Wow -- that's a lot of saints for only being one twelfth of the list... And those are only the Greek names? Is the Orthodox church more liberal than the Catholic Church in naming saints, or have I just not counted our saints recently?
These are not exclusively Greek names, but it is from a Greek-tradition synaxarion. However, I skipped a huge amount of names. You can check out a similar listing in the days of the year at OrthodoxWiki.
I don't know how to account for the difference in apparent numbers of saints, but in Orthodoxy, I get the general idea that if a saint is locally proclaimed, the person is pretty much assumed to be a saint. There are cases of official glorification (like the Catholic canonization in terms of announcement), but I doubt that there are specific miracles required of Orthodox saints that are in place for a person to be considered a Catholic saint.
However, it could be just that many saints are not publicized, so you don't know about them but the Catholic Church does; for instance, the "saint of the day" lists at catholic.org and St. Patrick's Cathedral are rather significant in the number of lesser-known saints.
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