Today’s name day reaches beyond Greek homes in more than one direction. Any Serge, Sergio, Sergei or Sergiu in your contacts shares the day with the Greek name Sergios, while Bacchus brings in a famous classical name from antiquity and Polychronios carries one of the most characteristically Greek sounds of all. It is the kind of date that lets a small Greek custom travel easily into a Canadian workplace, classroom or group chat.
Sergius comes from the old Roman family name Sergius, which passed into Greek as Sergios and then spread widely across Europe in forms like Serge, Sergio and Sergei. Bacchus is the Latin form of Greek Bakchos, a celebrated epithet of Dionysus in classical literature, so its path runs from ancient Greek into Roman culture and then into English. Polychronios and the everyday Greek form Polychronis come straight from Greek elements meaning many and time or years, giving the name the warm sense of long life and enduring years.
In Eastern Orthodox Christianity, a person’s name day is the feast day of the saint after whom they were named at baptism.
Polychronios has an especially lovely resonance on a day like this. It suits the papou everyone secretly measures time by, the one still at every family table, still telling the same stories a little better each year. A Sergios might be the colleague everyone knows as calm and reliable, or the hockey dad in the arena parking lot whose name shifts effortlessly between Greek at home and Serge at work. And Bacchus, rare as a given name, feels made for the friend who brings life to a gathering, the host who knows how to turn an ordinary evening into something memorable.
Chronia Polla to everyone celebrating today, Greek and non-Greek alike. If you know a Serge, Sergio or Sergei, or someone in your family named Polychronis or Bacchus, today is a good day to send the wish along and share what a Greek name day means.
