nickname for Roman soldiers was “Miles” from Latin mille for “thousand” – legionaries walked everywhere giving us the unit of measure, a Roman mile = mille passus (thousand paces)
It’s actually worse. The name couldn’t be from the 1st century CE because otherwise it would be Lonchinus [lɔn’ki:nʊs]; back then Greek still kept ⟨χ⟩ as [kʰ] (as in “kit”), this would only change around the 4th century or so.
Plus whoever coined that name wasn’t fully proficient in Greek, otherwise they wouldn’t plop a Latin -īnus into it, they’d go with ⟨λογχίτης⟩ lonkhítēs “spear-bearer, the spear guy” → Lonchites instead.
…the English pronunciation stands out as being weirder than everything above. Also, obligatory:
A spear of Longinus a day keeps the Tang sea away~
![[ElderCactus] There were worse outcomes](https://lemmy.world/pictrs/image/5715508f-01e1-4e13-90ad-a098f1bb8f63.jpeg){kind=link}
They didn’t know this soldier’s name so they essentially named him “Lancer”. Amazing.
“Yo Lance, you really get to the point.”
“That’s a really good point. Never thought of it that way.”
“Really piercing insight. Gets to the heart of the matter…”
nickname for Roman soldiers was “Miles” from Latin mille for “thousand” – legionaries walked everywhere giving us the unit of measure, a Roman mile = mille passus (thousand paces)
It’s actually worse. The name couldn’t be from the 1st century CE because otherwise it would be Lonchinus [lɔn’ki:nʊs]; back then Greek still kept ⟨χ⟩ as [kʰ] (as in “kit”), this would only change around the 4th century or so.
Plus whoever coined that name wasn’t fully proficient in Greek, otherwise they wouldn’t plop a Latin -īnus into it, they’d go with ⟨λογχίτης⟩ lonkhítēs “spear-bearer, the spear guy” → Lonchites instead.
…the English pronunciation stands out as being weirder than everything above. Also, obligatory:
A spear of Longinus a day keeps the Tang sea away~
Ah there is the fork of horripilation. You have one of Sheororaths holy artifacts.