Section I.
Greek appellations may be divided into various classes; the first, those of the gods and early heroes are derived from languages inexplicable even by the classical Greeks. These were seldom or never given to human beings, though derivatives from them often were.
The second class is of those formed from epithets in the spoken language. These belonged to the Greeks of the historical age, and such as were borne by the Macedonian conquerors became spread throughout the East, thus sometimes falling to the lot of early saints of the Church, and becoming universally popular in Christendom. Of others of merely classic association a few survived among the native Greeks, while others were resuscitated at intervals; first, by the vanity of decaying Rome; next, by the revival of ancient literature in the Cinque-cento; then, by the magniloquent taste of the Scudery romances in France; again, in France, by the republican mania; and, in the present time, by the same taste in America, and by the reminiscences of the modern Greeks.
After the preaching of the Gospel, Greece had vigour enough to compose appropriate baptismal names for the converts; and it is curious to observe that no other country could have ever been so free from the trammels of hereditary nomenclature, for no other has so complete a set of names directly bearing upon Christianity. So graceful are they in sound as well as meaning, and so honoured for those who bore them, that many have spread throughout Europe.
Lastly, even modern Greek has thrown out many names of graceful sound, which are, however, chiefly confined to the Romaic.
Section II.—Names from Zeus.
At the head of the whole Greek system stands the mighty Zeus (Ζεύς), a word that has been erected into a proper name for the thundering father of gods and men, whilst the cognate θεὸς (theos) passed into a generic term; just as at Rome the Deus Pater (God-Father), or Jupiter, from the same source, became the single god, and deus the general designation.
All come from the same source as the Sanscrit Deva, and are connected with the open sky, and the idea of light that has produced our word day. We shall come upon them again and again; but for the present we will confine ourselves to the personal names produced by Zeus, in his individual character, leaving those from Theos to the Christian era, to which most of them belong.
Their regular declension of Zeus made Dios the genitive case; and thus Diodorus, Diogenes, &c., ought, perhaps, to be referred to him; but the more poetical, and, therefore, most probably the older, form, was Zenos in the genitive; and as Dios also meant heaven, the above names seem to be better explained as heaven-gift and heaven-born, leaving to Zeus only those that retain the same commencement.
Ζηνὼν, or, as it is commonly called, Zeno, was a good deal used in Greece throughout the classical times, and descending to Christian times, named a saint martyred under Gallienus, also a bishop of Verona, who left ninety-three sermons, at the beginning of the fourth century, and thus made it a canonical name, although the rules of the Church had forbidden christening children after heathen gods. Except for the Isaurian Emperor Zeno, and an occasional Russian Sinon, there has not, however, been much disposition to use the name.