🔼The name Secundus: Summary
- Meaning
- Second
- Etymology
- From secundus, second.
🔼The name Secundus in the Bible
The name Secundus occurs in the Bible in Acts 20:4 only. It belongs to an otherwise undiscussed man of Thessalonica, who had traveled with Paul and some others, but went ahead to Troas and waited there for Paul as he went to Macedonia.
As we discuss in greater length in our articles on Sopater and Aeneas, author Luke was strongly inspired by the Nostoi genre, and wove many obvious puns and references to historical events and significant literary characters into his narratives. Nobody in Luke's original audience would have missed out the pun on Secundus, which was also the last name of Pliny the Elder, the friend of Vespasian, military commander and prolific author. His works include the staggeringly complete The Natural History. In 79 AD, Pliny the Elder was killed by the erupting Vesuvius and his estate was inherited by his nephew, the then eighteen year old Pliny the Younger, also named Secundus.
🔼Etymology of the name Secundus
The name Secundus is the same as the Latin masculine nominative word for Second, which relates to the verb sequor, to follow. This word secundus has a slight positive bias in that it was sometimes used to refer to agreeability or an ocean current that was considered favorable to one's destination. Otherwise, our name stems from a tradition of names derived from numbers that was prevalent throughout the classical world: the Semitic name Arba means Four and Shelesh means Three. The name Pontius may mean Five, from pentas in Latin and πεντε (pente) in Greek. And in Latin there are many men named Primus (First), Tertius (Third), Quartus (Fourth), Quintus (Fifth), Sextus (Sixth), Septimus (Seventh) and Octavius (Eight) from which of course Octavian.