Pashley, Robert: Travels in Crete (Band 1) (Cambridge und London, 1837)

142

MODERN CHRISTIAN NAMKS.

[chap.

have, however, at all events, greatly aided the saints
in supplying the modern Greek with his baptismal no-
menclature ; and, for the tens of thousands of men,
who now bear the names of Christian saints, there are
thousands of women who have only those of Pagan
goddesses112.

Sophia, which has become a common name in most European languages,
properly denotes the Eternal Wisdom of the Godhead, the object of the dedi-
cation of Justinian's celebrated temple, and not a mere Saint. In the faith of
the modern Greek, however, Haghia Sophia is as much an individual Saint
as Veronica is now at Rome, or as Amphibolus used to be in Great Britain.

112 We have similar phenomena in our own country, where certain Saints
have supplied even the hereditary surnames of more than one noble house;
and where we may also find, though more rarely, the names of pagan Gods,
(I have myself met with those of Bacchus and Mars,) descending from father
to son in Christian families. The life of the Jesuit Diana has been written
by Eayle : and the name of Professor Pallas must also be known to many
of my readers.