Why You Should Name Your Next Son "Theophilus"

From “In Search of Theophilus” by Father George Rutler

“The lyrical name Theophilus, which as Theophilos is Greek for Lover of God, is not a common name today. It does not seem ever to have been very popular.

Looking through occidental eyes, the first governor of the New Haven Colony in the seventeenth century was Theophilus Eaton.

In England Theophilus Cibber was a Shakespearian actor of the eighteenth century until he drowned off the Scottish coast in a shipwreck.

His more celebrated contemporary, Mozart, had Theophilus as one of his baptismal names along with Johannes Chrysostomus Wolfgangus: Amadeus (like Gottlieb) is a variant of Theophilus.

As a Confederate general, the name of Theophilus Holmes must have impressed his troops and daunted his enemies.

Theophilus Van Kennel of Philadelphia patented the revolving door in 1888, without which much of Manhattan would be at a near standstill today.

In the 1960’s, Theophilus Connor was the segregationist Commissioner of Public Safety in Birmingham, Alabama who preferred to be called “Bull” Connor,

and there is a ”Hip-Hop” singer from Brooklyn named Theophilus London who uses his name to endorse Bushmill whiskey.

The eponymous character in Thornton Wilder’s last novel “Theophilus North” may have been based in part on the author himself.

Farther back, there were a Benedictine monk named Theophilus who wrote volumes on metallurgy and painting in the eleventh century,

an iconoclastic Byzantine emperor

and also an astrologer of Edessa in the eighth century,

and a fourth century patriarch of Alexandria in Egypt.

An impact crater on our moon is named Theophilus.

What matters is that Saint Luke addressed his account of the Gospel and his Acts of the Apostle to Theophilus . . ..”

http://blog.newadvent.org/2013/02/in-search-of-theophilus.html