John II was the first pope to choose a regnal name; he supposedly did this because his birth name, Mercurius, is derived from that of the Roman god Mercury. Oddly, this same problem does not seem to have bothered two of his predecessors, Pope St. Dionysius and Pope St. Zephyrinus, whose given names refer to the Greek gods of winemaking and the west wind, respectively.
Are there any other pagan gods who lent their name, in some form, to at least one saint recognized by the Catholic or Orthodox churches? I can think of only two:
There is a long tradition in early Christianity of borrowing from Roman “mystery cults” even though they ended up prosecuting the Mithralists. There are a lot of saints from pre-Nicene Christianity (and even after in non-mainline Christian churches, especially Oriental Orthodoxy) which are purportedly liberally borrowed from pagan traditions although the historiography of at least some of those claims is questionable.
There’s a Saint Festus and his companion Saint Januarius.
“Festus” is a shortened form of “Hephaestus”, the Greek equivalent of Vulcan. Januarius is a month, but the name is derived from Janus, who was the patron god of doorways
The OP mentions Pope Dionysius, but it’s worth pointing out that “Dionysus” morphed into “Dennis”, and there are several Saints named “Dennis” and “Denis” and the like.
Not a saint, and I don’t think Zoroastrians are considered “pagans” but there was Pope Hormisdas which derives from Ahura Mazda.
Edit: just discovered there is a Saint Hormizd and Saint Rabban Hormizd, who is recognized by the Chaldean (Roman Catholic) church and other non-Catholic ones.
Yes, kinda- “His name is related to the Egyptian god Anoubis.” is what wiki said.
Of course, in most of these cases, the saint isnt actually named for a pagane diety, just using a common name passed down which has roots in that name.
@DrDeth’s nomination of St. Brigid got me thinking that there must be other saints who share names with gods of the Irish pantheon. A few minutes’ search dug up St. Aengus and his namesake deity Aengus. (Both names are alternatively spelled Óengus.)
I bet if we systematically went through Wikipedia’s list of Tuatha Dé Denann we could find more examples.
Indeed, you see a lot of this outside the narrow realm of Christian saint names. The Jewish names “ESther” and “Mordechai” derive from the Mesopotamian gods “Ishtar” and “Marduk”. (In fact, ESther is a saint in the Eastern Orthodox church), but it’s not really as if they’re named directly after the gods – they have common names that were themselves derived from the names of the gods. I suspect they might be “worn-down” forms of names that were originally translations of “Gift of Ishtar” and “Gift of Marduk”, rather than taken directly from the god. Such names are extremely common across cultures – “Apollodorus”, for instance, or “Theodore” or “Godiva” (from “God Gifu”)