Mike Aubrey over at εν εφέσω: Thoughts and Meditations just added my blog to his blogroll, and I have also added his to mine. Like me here at ΑΓΑΠΗΣΕΙΣ, Mike’s blog title is Greek, using a Greek font. Mike explains the choice of his blog title here and I explain mine in my About ΑΓΑΠΗΣΕΙΣ page. Actually, Mike and I have much more in common than blog titles. Mike is studying at GIAL where I am nearly finished, and his interests overlap with mine in the areas of linguistics, translation, biblical exegesis, and even textual criticism.
I have always wondered if it wasn’t such a good idea to choose a Greek title, especially the one I chose, since it may not even be readily pronounced by those who aren’t familiar with the Greek letters. The alpha (Α), epsilon, (Ε) and iota (Ι) are readily recognizeable, and maybe also the sigma (Σ) and pi (Π) for those who have had any higher level math. But the gamma (Γ) and eta (Η) might either draw blanks or suggest the wrong pronunciation. The ‘Γ’ makes a hard ‘g’ sound and the ‘H’ is a long ‘a’ or ‘e’ vowel, depending on which pronunciation system one uses. You could say it like this…
ah-gah-PEH-sehs
Anyway, given the potential confusion, I really like what Mike did when he listed ΑΓΑΠΗΣΕΙΣ on his blogroll. He listed it as ΑΓΑΠΗΣΕΙΣ – You shall love. At least this includes some form that has meaning for most people. When this blog was current on Blogger, I had this tagline…
ΑΓΑΠΗΣΕΙΣ is Greek for ‘you will love’. This blog is devoted to the intersection of biblical exegesis, linguistics, and translation. It is offered as a spiritual discipline of the mind in order to love God and love others.
Evidently, the theme I am using here at WordPress does not include the tagline with the blog title. So I have taken Mike’s lead, and I added the “you will love” to the title (I didn’t think there was a way to include my whole tagline without it appearing in the large title font size). I have also added the tagline I had previously to the start of my About ΑΓΑΠΗΣΕΙΣ page.
ΑΓΑΠΗΣΕΙΣ - you shall love 
14 January, 2008 at 5:31 am
Don’t forget hermeneutics and linguistics. I have a feeling from other posts of yours, that we have those in common too.
14 January, 2008 at 9:37 am
Anonymous,
Glad I found your site via Mike’s. good stuff, very good stuff.
–michael
14 January, 2008 at 10:55 am
Mike, I did mention linguistics and biblical exegesis. But regarding hermeneutics, maybe you’re using the word more in the sense of application?
14 January, 2008 at 11:07 am
Michael,
Thanks for stopping by. You can call me ‘zephyr’. Of course, when I switched over to WordPress from Blogger, ‘zephyr’ was already taken, so my name here is ‘bzephyr’. I see that you’re also in the category of blogs with a Greek title.
14 January, 2008 at 11:17 am
yes,
i am in the category w/grk titled blogs. i’ll be sure to check your site more often zephyr (fun word, by the way).
14 January, 2008 at 11:20 am
Not necessarily application. On your reading list, you listed Longenecker’s book under hermeneutics. I was thinking more along the lines of interpretive method, of which in some sense, linguistics could be viewed as a subset (i.e. Thiselton’s essay on semantics in I. Howard Marshall’s classic New Testament Interpretation.
Generally, I think of hermeneutics in three ways: Broader philosophical terms (such as the question of meaning, authorial intent, philosophy of language kind of thing), more practical terms such as methodology (including but not limited to Discourse Analysis or the various forms of criticisms (historical, literary and the like), and the applicational result of interpretation as well (though I prefer to think in terms of theology, especially Biblical theology).
14 January, 2008 at 12:00 pm
Mike,
Everything you described for hermeneutics is what I meant by ‘biblical exegesis’ in my original posting and the kinds of things I intent to inlcude in my reading category ‘hermeneutics’. Ahhh, terminology.
14 January, 2008 at 12:04 pm
Michael,
Glad you like my ‘name’. I was always wanting to name one of our children Zephaniah and call him Zeph or Zephyr for short. And then there’s the connection to wind and Spirit. But my wife never went for the name until our third pregnancy, and we lost that baby before he/she was born. So maybe I’ll meet my little Zephaniah in heaven and have to tell him that I was using his name online!
14 January, 2008 at 12:11 pm
glad we got that straightened out.
15 January, 2008 at 11:50 am
I put together a list of all Greek words (in inflected forms) in the NT and LXX that can be represented using capital letters from the English (Latin) alphabet. For instance: KYPIOC IHCOYC XPICTOC for Κυριος Ιησους Χριστος. This substitutes a Y for an upsilon, a P for a rho and a C for a sigma (making it an uncial/lunate sigma).
This means that one can build blog titles, create URLs and heck, even make vanity license plates with Greek!
I’ve uploaded the file with all the words here.
22 April, 2010 at 1:12 pm
Finally, a few other blogs using Greek in their titles (mine is here)
FYI: Useful tips are here for making Greek & Hebrew work on sites.