Evangelos

Evangelos means bearer of good news, from the Greek eu, good, and angelos, messenger — the root from which the word evangelist grew. In Greece it remains a staple masculine name, celebrated on Christmas Day and routinely clipped to Vangelis in conversation. The composer Vangelis, born Evangelos Odysseas Papathanassiou, gave the short form a global shimmer with Chariots of Fire and Blade Runner. Four syllables, eh-VAN-geh-los, with the open vowels typical of Greek. Something annunciatory lives in it, a sense of arrival, of a door opening, of news worth carrying across a long distance on foot.