🔼The name Apollonia: Summary
- Meaning
- [Things] Of Apollo
- Etymology
- From the name Apollo, possibly from απολλυμι (apollumi), to destroy.
🔼The name Apollonia in the Bible
The name Apollonia occurs only once in the Bible, namely in Acts 17:1, which tells how Paul and Silas traveled through Amphipolis and Apollonia, until they arrived at Thessalonica.
There were quite a few places called Apollonia in antiquity (five on Crete alone), and this one was situated on the Via Egnatia — a Roman highway, built under and named after an otherwise unremarkable governor Gnaeus Egnatius, around 120 BC — about halfway between Amphipolis and Thessalonica, in Macedonia.
🔼Etymology of the name Apollonia
The name Apollonia is the neutral plural form of Απολλωνιος (Apollonios), meaning of or belonging to Απολλων (Apollon), Apollo. It hence means Things Of Apollo, which in turn was the standard term for a festival dedicated to Apollo.
The origin and ultimate meaning of the name Apollo is unclear, but as we discuss at some length in our article on the name Apollos, the complex divine character of Apollo was probably imported into the Greek language basin, and the non-Greek name that came with it came to gravitate toward conveniently matching Greek terms.
Here at Abarim Publications we suspect that the name Apollo ultimately stems from the Hebrew root פלל (palal), to discern, the verb פלא (pala'), to be extraordinary, or אפל ('apal), to darken, and was finally honed to match the verb απολλυμι (apollumi), to exterminate, to destroy, which puts the name Apollo somewhat on a par with the divine name Shaddai, meaning Destroyer:
ολλυμι απολλυμι
The verb ολλυμι (ollumi) means to terminate, kill or destroy, and verb απολλυμι (apollumi) means to destroy or exterminate, specifically by a removal from a natural environment or social collective (this word describes the proverbially "lost" sheep).
This verb may also mean to be extracted by merit of the destruction of whatever was holding one back, and as such it conveys an important principle of evolution, namely that future winners exist in evolutionary stasis as long as they remain overwhelmed by a majority of inferiors. The ancestors of mammals and birds existed long before they could finally arise, and could do so only when the great dinosaurs had been exterminated.
Noun απωλεια (apoleia) means a loss or extermination. Verb συναπολλυμι (sunapollumi) means to jointly exterminate. Noun ολεθρος (olethros) means a termination. Verb ολοθρευω (olothreuo) means to cause termination, and noun ολοθρευτης (olothreutes) describes a terminator.
🔼Apollonia meaning
The name Apollonia means [Things] Of Apollo.