Achaia meaning

Meaning

Pain, Grief

Etymology

From the noun αχος (achos), pain or grief.

Related names

• Via αχος (achos): Achaicus

Achaia or Achaea was the name of the northern portion of the Peloponnese; the peninsula just west of Athens, from where king Menelaus of Sparta launched his attack upon Troy after his wife Helen had run off with Paris of Troy. Why this king did that is not always very well understood, but it was certainly not because Helen's face was so very pretty that she could launch a thousand ships (as Christopher Marlowe once wrote). That's not to say that Helen was not very beautiful, because that's simply a fact of the story. But her beauty was not in her face, as we explain in more detail in our article on Miletus.

In 146 BC, about a millennium after the battle of Troy, Achaia was conquered by the Romans, who transferred its name upon the region at large: the Roman province Achaia, now covering the whole Peloponnese and also including the area north of it. In the north it bordered Macedonia.

As Corinth was an Achaian city, Achaia is mentioned 11 times in the New Testament — see full concordance.

The name Achaia comes from the Greek noun αχος (achos), meaning pain or grief:

Note that Achaia was also an epithet of Demeter. She was known as Grief because of the dire fate of her daughter Persephone.

The name Achaia means Grief or Trouble. Note the striking similarity with the Hebrew name Achar, Troubler, from the verb עכר (akar), to disturb or trouble.