Cilicia meaning

Meaning

Wholly unknown but perhaps Hard Place; it's mostly associated with the eponymous cilicium, goat hair cloth.

Etymology

From the verb כלח (kalah), to look sternly or be hard.

Related names

• Via כלח (kalah): Calah

The name Cilicia belongs to the region that covers the eastern half of the southern coast of Anatolia (now Turkey) from Pamphylia on its western edge to where this coast turns abruptly south toward Syria, Lebanon and Israel. The region was split in two by the Lamos River (now called Limonlu River), which divided it into "Rough" Cilicia to the west and "Flat" Cilicia to the east: this on account of the Taurus mountains. Directly to the south of Cilicia is the island Cyprus. The main city of Cilicia was Tarsus, where Paul came from, and whose library and academic momentum was said to have rivalled that of Athens and Alexandria.

In 64 BC, Cilicia was annexed to the Roman Republic (in 63 BC, Judea followed), but this was after the Romans had violently cleared out the many pirate nests that the coast was host to — which actually explains the Roman presence in that area, and this in turn had a lot to do with some pirates having made the mistake of kidnapping young Julius Caesar and holding him for ransom (they had asked for 20 talents of silver but Julius insisted that they would ask for 50; when his ransom was paid and he was released, Julius mustered a fleet and pursued them and crucified them all).

The Romans initially made Cilicia a colossal province (albeit governed mostly by a slew of local kings) that included Pamphylia in the west, Cyprus in the south, Pisidia in the north-west and Phrygia and Lycaonia in the north. But Mark Anthony gave Cyprus to Cleopatra, and other parts of it went elsewhere, so that by the time of Paul, Cilicia was a minor but imperial province (meaning that the emperor himself appointed its governor, rather than the senate).

The name Cilicia occurs 8 times in the New Testament; see full concordance.

The name Cilicia is the Latin rendering of the Greek rendering of a native name that is vastly old. So old that it's no longer clear from which language it came and what it might have meant. The Assyrians left inscriptions that spoke of the Hilikku, but it's not clear whether that was an Assyrian name (that meant something in Assyrian), which was assumed by the natives so dubbed, or whether the Assyrians had transliterated or transcribed a native name that sounded to them like Hilikku (better yet: that looks like Hilikku in a Latin transliteration of an Assyrian term that nobody knows the actual sound of).

Perhaps the name Cilicia was originally Semitic, and relates to the verb כלח (kalah), to look sternly or be hard:

This same verb may have given rise to the name כלח (kalach), of the fabled city of Calah, which could easily morph into Κιλιξ (Kilix), the name of the legendary founder of Cilicia (and brother of Cadmus, Phoenix and Europa; all Phoenician characters). The Greek word for a single male Cilician was the same, Κιλιξ (Kilix). A female Cilician was called Κιλισσα (Kilissa).

In Greek, the name Cilicia would have reminded of words like κιλλος (killos), meaning donkey, or κιλλιβας (killibas), a three-legged stand (for clothes, a shield or a painting; in German indeed called Esel, donkey) which both probably stem from a pre-Greek word meaning twisted or athwart (i.e. oblique or going in some unexpected direction). Then there is the noun κυλιξ (kulix), meaning cup or chalice, which reminds of the name Caphtor (which could mean Cup), and which is also pre-Greek. The verb κυλιω (kulio) means to roll along. Noun κυλινδρος (kulindros) describes a rolling stone (hence our word cylinder), which could be a devise that printed a cylindrical seal in wax. This same word could mean a roll in the sense of a book roll, or a volume, which reminds of the names Sephar and Daberath.

The familiar word κυκλος (kuklos) means circle, which brings to mind Singidunum (now Belgrade), which means City of the Circle, in an obvious early celebration of a semi-republican government (or at least a government by a king who listened to his council, which in turn controlled a vast intelligence network; see the name Gog). The noun κυλα (kula) and the Latin equivalent cilium mean eyelid, which reminds of the Hebrew term "eyelids of dawn" (see our article on שחר, shahar), also because the name Anatolia comes from ανατολη (anatole), meaning sunrise.

But be all that as it may, the name Cilicia was certainly primarily associated with the word cilicium, or κιλικιον (kilikion), just like Pergamum was known for its parchment, Cyprus for its copper (cuprum is Latin for "of Cyprus"), and Byblos for its paper. The name cilicium (i.e. the stuff from Cilicia) belonged to a specific sort of cloth made from Cilician goat hair. It was specifically used for sails and for protective outboard mats that were supposed to absorb the blow of ballistic impacts — and see our article on the verb ερειδω (ereido), to fix firmly, for a quick overview of the important and often evoked similarities between seamanship and statecraft.

Sheep and goats may look somewhat the same in modern eyes, but in the classical world, sheep were associated with all things virtuous, productive and even brave and compliant, whereas goats were associated with all things horrible, cowardly and sideways (hence a scape-goat, not a scape-sheep). The Hebrew word for goat, namely שעיר (sa'ir), hence the name Seir, is closely related to both שער (se'ar), a bristly hair, and שער (sa'r), meaning horror and שערה (se'ara), meaning storm. The Greek word for goat is τραγος (tragos), from which comes the familiar noun τραγωδια (tragodia), tragedy, literally: Ode To Goat.

What the name Cilicia may have meant in its original language (or even what that language might have been) is no longer clear. But to everybody in the classical world, the name Cilicia was strongly associated to goat-driven and goat-guarded ships, and thus to governments that ruled through terror and blitzkrieg and an callous imperviousness to whatever was thrown their way. Cilicia's most famous native son, Saul of Tarsus, began his career in quite the same fashion: by dispensing terror and storm (Acts 9:1).