Evangelos

The name announces itself: from the Greek eu, good, and angelos, messenger, it means bearer of good news, the same root that gives English the word evangelist and the literary form gospel. In Greece it remains a masculine stalwart, celebrated on Christmas Day, shortened in conversation to Vangelis with the ease of a name that has always known it was too long for daily use.

Vangelis Papathanassiou — who recorded under his first name alone — gave the short form a particular shimmer: the synthesized opening of Chariots of Fire, the rain-slicked streets of Blade Runner, the kind of film scores that stay in the body long after the credits roll. The full form, eh-VAN-geh-los, carries something annunciatory in its architecture, a sense of arrival, of a door swung wide. It pairs naturally with Panagiotis and Athanasios, the heavy-duty Greek masculine names that project theological seriousness without sacrificing musicality. For parents inclined toward that tradition, Evangelos has the virtue of a name that travels well in both directions: large enough for a saint's feast, compact enough, as Vangelis, for everyday use.