Saba

Saba comes from Hebrew, where it names something ordinary and honored at once: the old man, the grandfather. In Aramaic the same word, saba, meant the elder of a household, the one whose years gave him standing. The short meaning stays close. To carry Saba is to wear the word for grandfather as a given name.

The name traveled into Arabic surroundings and kept its shape. Its best known bearer is Saint Sabas the Sanctified, a monk born in Cappadocia in 439, who founded a monastery in the Judean desert that still bears his name. The Church remembers him on the fifth of December, and Polish calendars mark Saba there too.

So a boy named Saba shares a name-day with a desert abbot. Picture the entry in a class register, one short name among the longer ones. It means old man, grandfather, and it says so plainly.