Silas (name) The Latin name "Silvanus" may be derived from pre-Roman Italian languages. Silas (name) Silas is a common given name and a lesser-known surname. It is a cognate of Silvanus. Silas as a name today comes from the early Christian disciple Silas. He is consistently called "Silas" in Acts, but the Latin Silvanus, which means "of the forest," is always used by Paul and in the First Epistle of Peter; it is likely that "Silvanus" is the Romanized version of the original "Silas," or that "Silas" is the Greek nickname for "Silvanus." It has been suggested that Silas is the Greek
Joshua (name) Joshua (name) Joshua is a Biblical given name derived from the Hebrew "Yehoshua" (). The name was a common alternative form of the name – yēšūă which corresponds to the Greek spelling Ἰησοῦς ("Iesous"), from which, through the Latin "Iesus", comes the English spelling Jesus. As a result of the origin of the name, a majority of people before the 17th century who have this name were Jewish. A variant, truncated form of the name, Josh, gained popularity in the United States in the 1970s. Information from the United Kingdom's Office for National Statistics from 2003 to 2007 shows "Joshua"