Everyday LifeGreek → English
Peter
/ˈpiːtər/noun
A male given name, borne by the apostle traditionally counted the first bishop of Rome.
The Greek roots
πέτρα
pétra
rock, crag
Literally: “rock”
Follow a root:πέτρα6 words
The story of the word
The name is a translation and a pun at once. Jesus renamed Simon with the Aramaic Kepha, rock, which the Greek gospels rendered as Petros, a masculine form invented for the purpose because πέτρα is feminine. The pun about building a church on this rock only fully works in the Greek, and the Latin Petrus carried it into every European language, giving Pierre, Pedro, Pyotr and Petros. The verb to peter out is unrelated and of obscure American mining origin.
- How it travelled
- Ancient Greek → Latin → Old French → English
The same roots elsewhere
Other languages reached for exactly the same Greek pieces.
Same family
petrifypetroleumsaltpetrepetrology
In a sentence
Peter took the early train and still arrived after everyone else.