There’s no N in Loginus
Every where you look nowadays, Loginus is spelled with two Ns, “Longinus.” Not only does this force speakers to stumble over a pronunciation reminiscent of female genitalia, it’s also the wrong way to spell his name.
As you can read in his ☧eople page, Saint Loginus is a composite of two characters, one from the synoptic gospels (Matthew, Mark, and Luke), and the other from the gospel of John. Why, you may wonder, do I spell his name with just one N? Because Loginus, not Longinus, is the historically accurate way of spelling this saint’s name.
There are two reasons that there is only one N in Loginus: 1) the word upon which his name is based contains no equivalent “N” sound, and 2) the earliest appearance of Loginus’ name is spelled with only one N, which comes from its Latin suffix.
The Spearing One
It’s in John 19:34 that the soldier in question earns his name by using a spear to pierce Jesus’ side. The Greek word for this weapon of war, λόγχη (logchē, G3057), forms the first part of Loginus’ name. Like the word christianos, (G5546), Loginus takes a Greek word and adds a Latin suffix to create a name, making him something like “the one who spears.”
Transliterations are a dime a dozen, but λόγχη is usually rendered logchē. Notice there’s no N sound;
λ = Lambda
ό = Omicron
γ = Gamma
χ = CHi
η = Eta
When Saint Jerome translated the Bible from Greek to Latin, he didn’t have to transliterate since Latin already had a word for spear: lancea. The bastardized English name “Longinus” probably comes from combining Jerome's Vulgate with the original Greek. But there was an earlier, uncorrupted word that combined Greek λόγχη with the Latin suffix -ianus.
Loginus Has Entered the Chat
The first time Loginus appears in Christian art is in the Rabbula Gospels, a sixth-century text containing the first crucifixion scene in an illuminated manuscript. In the scene above, Saint Loginus is the only character in red and the only one wearing a belt, or cingulum, indicating his military status. Psaul includes one in his rendition of the Armor of God, but none are mentioned by Isaiah 59:17 or Wisdom 5, since these texts were composed before Rome controlled Israel through the Herods.
We can see the soldier’s name is indicated; ΛΟΓΙΝΟ(?). The first three are upper case Greek letters Lamba, Omicron, and Gamma. The next three are either Greek (Iota, Nu, Omicron) or regular old Latin; LOGINO_. The last character is hard to make out, but it sure doesn’t seem like another N. As the name proceeded through time, the second O becomes a U, and we have his name - LOGINUS.
