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".
Paul (given name) included such prominent persons as Lucius Aemilius Paullus, Lucius Aemilius Paullus Macedonicus, Lucius Aemilius Lepidus Paullus, Tertia Aemilia Paulla (the wife of Scipio Africanus), and Sergius Paulus. Its prevalence in nations with a Christian heritage is primarily due to its attachment to Saint Paul the Apostle, whose Greek name was Παῦλος, "Paûlos", a transliteration from the Latin, also carrying the "modest" meaning of this name, and possibly chosen because of its similarity to his Jewish name Šaul. The name Paul is common, with variations, in all European languages (e.g. English, French, Spanish, Catalan, Portuguese, Italian, German, Dutch, Scandinavian, Greek, Russian,