ST. ROCK

I'm not a religious person, so I was surprised to learn that St. Peter's real name wasn't actually Peter but Simon Bar-Jona. Peter, which is a Greek translation of the Syriac word for "stone", was actually a nickname given to Simon (sometimes stylized Simeon, or written out in full as Simon Peter) by Jesus on the notion that Simon would serve as the "rock" upon which he would build his Church. This makes the name related to words like petroleum, petrify, saltpeter, and other stone-related terms; beyond Greek, the etymology is unknown. Because it was a popular thing in Christian countries to name children after apostles, many children were named some variation of Peter, and this developed across several languages to give us Pedro, Pierre, Pierce, Pearson, and more.