• Neato
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    219 months ago

    Longinus (/lɒnˈdʒaɪnəs/) is the name given to the unnamed Roman soldier who pierced the side of Jesus with a lance;

    The name is probably Latinized from the Greek lonche (λόγχη), the word used for the lance mentioned in John 19:34.[9]

    They didn’t know this soldier’s name so they essentially named him “Lancer”. Amazing.

    • Lvxferre
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      99 months ago

      It’s actually worse. The name couldn’t be from the 1st century CE because otherwise it would be Lonchinus [lɔn’ki:nʊs]; back then Greek still kept ⟨χ⟩ as [kʰ] (as in “kit”), this would only change around the 4th century or so.

      Plus whoever coined that name wasn’t fully proficient in Greek, otherwise they wouldn’t plop a Latin -īnus into it, they’d go with ⟨λογχίτης⟩ lonkhítēs “spear-bearer, the spear guy” → Lonchites instead.

      …the English pronunciation stands out as being weirder than everything above. Also, obligatory:

      A spear of Longinus a day keeps the Tang sea away~

    • @[email protected]
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      39 months ago

      nickname for Roman soldiers was “Miles” from Latin mille for “thousand” – legionaries walked everywhere giving us the unit of measure, a Roman mile = mille passus (thousand paces)