Abanoub the Apprentice

St. Abanoub

So I needed a name for my Egyptian Christian expatriate sorcerer's apprentice.

I figured the obvious thing to do was find a list of Coptic saints and see if there was a name that jumped out at me.

There was. St. Abanoub. Maybe it helped that he was the third name on the list. Okay, though, I told myself, you can't just pick a name in the "As" without checking out the rest of the list.

So I went over the list. Then I went over the list again. I don't know exactly why, but I fell in love with the name "Abanoub." It means "Father of Gold." I guess I just like the sound of it. I learned that Abanoub is a saint not just in Coptic Orthodoxy, but in Eastern Orthodoxy and Roman Catholicism as well.

His story is here, along with a photograph of an alleged apparition of the saint in 2003.

Now, Abanoub is a fourth-century saint, and my Abanoub is a seventh-century Coptic Christian, so there's nothing very improbable about my hero being named after one of the saints of his Church.

The story of St. Abanoub is a grisly one. He was martyred at the age of 12, for preaching the faith to Roman authorities during the era of the persecutions of Diocletian. There are a lot of martyrs from this period, and their stories all sort of sound the same after a while. But I thought it would be interesting to adapt the saint's life into my character's life. As I mentioned, my Abanoub grew up during the conquest of Egypt by Arab Muslims. Perhaps he, too, in a fit of youthful zeal, challenged the religious views of the ruling class.

For my purposes, though, I'm going to imagine that my Abanoub did this when he was eighteen, because the image of a 12-year old boy getting beaten and tortured goes a little too far for me. So let's say my Abanoub, at the age of 18 and a little too headstrong, challenges the Arab rulers. It doesn't end well, only instead of getting killed, he just gets out of town. Way out. Like...Britain.

So there's my protagonist, Abanoub. And now you know why the blog URL is what it is.

No word counts just now, because I've had to set aside The Sorcerer's Apprentice for a little bit while I polish up a different novel.