Silas (name) 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 version of the Aramaic "Seila," a version of the Hebrew "Saul".
Sebastian (name) Sebastian (name) Sebastian is a given name. It comes from the Latin name "Sebastianus" meaning "from Sebastia", which was the ancient Greek name (Σεβάστεια) of the city now known as Sivas, located in the central portion of what is now Turkey. The name of the city is derived from the Greek word σεβαστός ("sebastos"), "venerable", which comes from σέβας ("sebas"), "awe, reverence, dread", in turn from the verb σέβομαι ("sebomai"), "feel awe, scruple, be ashamed". "Sebastos" was the Greek translation of the title "Augustus", which was used for Roman emperors. Sebastian became a widely used name because it was the