ACADEMY OF SAINT GABRIEL REPORT 2461 http://www.s-gabriel.org/2461 ************************************ 28 Feb 2002 From: (Josh Mittleman) Greetings from the Academy of Saint Gabriel! You asked whether "Christos the Cherub" is an appropriate name for a late-period Greek man. Here is what we have found. We found evidence of the Greek name among the Greek-speaking population of 14th century Crete, where it appears in Latin documents in the Italian form [1]. The underlying Greek name would have been spelled chi-rho-iota-sigma-tau-omega-sigma, with an accent mark on the omega. The name doesn't show up in our other late-period Greek sources, but it seems to be a reasonable choice. We expect it was pronounced \KHREE-stohs\, where \KH\ stands for the raspy sound in the Scottish word or German and \oh\ stands for the vowel sound in . Unfortunately, we've found no evidence that a word meaning "cherub" was ever used as a surname in Greek. In addition, your particular transliteration, , isn't correct: It doesn't accurately represent the Greek adaptation of the original Hebrew word. The Hebrew word was adopted into Greek in the Septuagint as (chi-epsilon-rho-omicron-upsilon-beta) [2]. The Hebrew plural was adopted as (chi-epsilon-rho-omicron-upsilon-beta-iota-mu) [3]. If you are more interested in the meaning than the Greek connection, you might consider moving your persona to Italy. Florentine records of the 15th century include the given name [4]. "Christo son of Cherubino" is a reasonable late-period Italian name. We hope this letter has been useful. Please write us again if any part of it has been unclear or if you have other questions. I was assisted in researching and writing this letter by Talan Gwynek, Maridonna Benvenuti, Raquel Buenaventura, Blaise de Cormeilles, Aryanhwy merch Catmael, Julie Stampnitzky, and Avraham ha Rofeh. For the Academy, Arval Benicoeur 28 Feb 2002 - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - References [1] McKee, Sally, _Wills from Late Medieval Venetian Crete 1312-1420_, 3 vols. (Washington, D.C.: Dumbarton Oaks Research Library and Collection, 1998, ISBN 0884022455). See also Emidio De Felice, _Dizionario dei nomi italiani_ (Arnoldo Mondadori Editore, Milan, 1992), s.n. Cristo, who states that is an Italian form of . [2] _The Compact Edition of the Oxford English Dictionary_ (New York: Oxford University Press, 1973), s.n. cherub. [3] Strong's Exhaustive Concordance of the Bible (Iowa: Riverside Book and Bible House), Greek Dictionary, page 77, word #5502. [4] Herlihy, David, R. Burr Litchfield, and Anthony Molho, "Florentine Renaissance Resources: Online Tratte of Office Holders 1282-1532" (WWW: Brown University, Providence, RI, 2000). http://www.stg.brown.edu/projects/tratte/