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
English words of Greek origin words like "metabolize", though composed of a Greek root and a Greek suffix, are modern compounds. Greek and English share many Indo-European cognates. In some cases, the cognates can be confused with borrowings. For example, the English "mouse" is cognate with Greek μῦς /mys/ and Latin "mūs", all from an Indo-European word "*mūs"; they are not borrowings. Similarly, "acre" is cognate to Latin "ager" and Greek αγρός, but not a borrowing; on the other hand, the prefix "agro-" is a borrowing from Greek, and the prefix "agri-" a borrowing from Latin. Many are used verbatim in English texts—"et cetera" ("etc."),