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
Britain (place name) In Old English or Anglo-Saxon, the Graeco-Latin term referring to Britain entered in the form of "Bryttania", as attested by Alfred the Great's translation of Orosius' "Seven Books of History Against the Pagans". The Latin name "Britannia" re-entered the language through the Old French '. The use of "Britons" for the inhabitants of Great Britain is derived from the Old French "bretun", the term for the people and language of Brittany, itself derived from Latin and Greek, e.g. the of Procopius. It was introduced into Middle English as ' in the late 13th century. There is much conflation of the