Nereus Meaning in the Bible

Nereus (Greek Νηρεύς) is the name of the old man of the sea in Greek mythology, father of the fifty Nereids, connected to a root meaning water or the flowing deep. It was an ordinary Greek personal name in the Roman world, carried by slaves and freedmen without anyone thinking twice about its pagan origin.

That is exactly the situation in Romans 16. Paul closes the letter with a long list of greetings to believers in Rome, and near the end: 'Salute Philologus, and Julia, Nereus, and his sister, and Olympas, and all the saints which are with them' (Romans 16:15). Nothing else is recorded about him. He is one line in a list — and the list is one of the most quietly remarkable passages in the New Testament, a roll-call of the ordinary people who made up the church in the imperial capital.

The names in that chapter are mostly Greek and Latin, many of them typical slave names, several of them drawn straight from pagan mythology: Hermes, Nereus, Olympas, Phlegon. The early church did not require converts to change their names. A man called after the sea god sat in a Roman house church and Paul sent him his greetings by name.

Later tradition attaches Nereus to a Roman martyr venerated with Achilleus, though the connection to Paul's greeting is not established. As a modern name it is very rare, slightly severe, and worth distinguishing from Nerida, which shares the sea imagery but is not the same name.