Saints with Funny Names

Editor's Note: Each month, senior writer Susie Lloyd profiles Eastern-rite Catholic saints on CatholicDigest.com. This month in Saints with Funny Names learn about Sts. Eulampius the martyr, Charitina the martyr, and Stachys the Apostle. …

St. Cyprian the Sorcerer (died 304) Feast day: Oct. 2  Just in time for Halloween, this month’s saint was a real charmer. Literally. Don’t get him mixed up with the other, famous, respectable Cyprian who was once bishop of Carthage and is…

Feed the hungry, give drink to the thirsty, shelter the stranger, bury the dead. September’s St. Phocas took the corporal works of mercy to new heights. Or should I say depths? Find the answer to that and several other bad puns in our story…

Most feast days of the saints celebrate the day the saint died, went to heaven, and stayed put. Lazarus Saturday celebrates the opposite. It is the day Our Lord summoned his friend back to this life, despite four days and several spools of…

From the nation of Armenia, in the darkest hours before the dawn, shines this tale of pure friendship. Polyeuctus (died 259) was a soldier in the service of Rome. Closer to him than a blood brother was his comrade in arms, Nearchus. In a…

John isn’t exactly a funny name to us but when St. John the Baptist was born, his relatives were scratching their heads over it. “Where did that come from? Nobody else in the family has that name.” “Elizabeth dear, shouldn’t the boy be…

Remember the 1990s when Ashley, Ashleigh, and Ashlee all ended up in the same kindergarten? That’s what it was like to research St. Hippolytus. I found two different Hippolytuses who claim the feast day, Aug. 13 and a third thrown in on…

July’s saint may have a funny name but let me tell you, Olha (890 – 969) was no joke. Just ask the Drevlians. They murdered her husband so she murdered them — 5,000 of them. Mafia style. That was before her conversion to Christianity. Olha,…

Finally, a woman! Have you noticed that most of our saints with funny names are men? It’s not my fault. There just aren’t that many women on the Eastern calendar. In June alone the ratio of females to males is 3:22. It’s really nobody’s…

We interrupt this Eastern Rite calendar to bring you St. Joseph. Why? Because St. Joseph (feast day March 19 on the Western calendar, patron of the universal Church) does not have a separate feast day on the Eastern calendar. This may lead…