Trogyllium meaning

Meaning

Place To Get Things To Nibble On, The Hole That Gobbles Up

Etymology

From the verb τρωγω (trogo), to consume holes into.

Related names

• Via τρωσω (troso): Troas

The name Trogyllium belonged to a promontory off the west coast of Asia Minor, about thirty kilometer south of ancient Ephesus and modern Kusadasi. Directly off the shore was the Greek island Samos, about 1.6 kilometer away. Some but not all manuscripts of Acts report that Paul, Luke and some others spent a night in Trogyllium, when they were on their way from Troas to Miletus, as part of their greater journey from Macedonia to Jerusalem: Paul's third missionary journey.

The name Trogyllium occurs only once in some versions of the Bible (among them the KJV), namely in Acts 20:15. Modern versions commonly assume this detail to be a gloss and omit it.

It's not entirely clear how the name Trogyllium originated (or in which language) but it's a pretty safe bet to assume that many Greek speakers saw it as coming from a dialectal variant of the familiar noun τρωγαλια (trogalia), nuts and berries (i.e. things to nibble on), or a Latinized localized form of it, describing a place for things to nibble on. Otherwise, our name may have referred to coastal caves, or perhaps the "hole" that existed between the coast and the island of Samos, and that gobbled up unwary sailors. Our name either derives from, or gravitated upon the verb τρωγω (trogo), to consume holes into:

To an average Greek speaker, the name Trogyllium probably sounded like Place For Things To Nibble On or The Hole That Gobbles Up