PortugueseHebrew rootApostle's name
Meaning: he has heard; God has heard.
Simão
| Origin | Portuguese form of Simon, from Hebrew Shim'on through Greek Simōn and Latin Simonem |
|---|---|
| Meaning | He has heard, or God has heard, from the Hebrew root shama, to hear |
| Pronunciation | see-MOWNG — ão is the “ow” of cow sent through the nose, with no hard G at the end |
| Popularity | Outside the current U.S. top 100; a quiet standard in Portugal that never trends and never disappears, and uncommon in Brazil |
| Variants | Simon, Simone, Simón, Szymon, Simeon; Portuguese keeps Simeão as a separate name for the Old Testament patriarch |
| Nicknames | Simãozinho, Si |
| Name day | 28 October, kept for the apostles Simon and Jude |
History & meaning
Hebrew Shim'on is built on the root shama, to hear, and is usually read as he has heard or God has heard — the report of a prayer answered. There is a complication worth stating: Greek already had its own name Simōn, from simos, snub-nosed, and Jewish families in the Hellenistic world adopted the Greek spelling for the Hebrew name because the two sounded alike. The New Testament name is the Hebrew one, but the letters on the page are Greek. Two apostles carried it, Simon Peter — who is Pedro in Portuguese once Jesus renames him — and Simon the Zealot, whose feast on 28 October is Simão's day.
Portugal has used the name steadily and without fuss since the Middle Ages, and it turns up in one significant place. Simão Rodrigues de Azevedo was one of the six students who took vows with Ignatius of Loyola in Paris in 1534 and founded the Society of Jesus; he stayed in Lisbon to run the Portuguese province while Francis Xavier sailed east in his place, and the Jesuit schools he set up shaped Portuguese education for two centuries. Modern Portugal knows the name best from the football pitch. Brazil, which took most of the other apostles' names enthusiastically, never much took this one.
Why it ends in ão
Simão is not an odd spelling; it belongs to a class. Three separate Latin endings — -anum, -anem and -onem — all collapsed into the same nasal diphthong in Portuguese, which is why leonem became leão, lion, and Simonem became Simão. That merger is also why the plurals of Portuguese -ão words look chaotic: irmão gives irmãos, pão gives pães, leão gives leões, each following whichever Latin ending it came from. Simão's own descendants remember the original: the common Portuguese surname Simões, meaning sons of Simão, still carries the -on- the given name lost. To say it, take the “ow” of cow, run it through your nose, and stop before you add a G: see-MOWNG.
Why parents choose it
It is a plain, unshowy apostle's name that has never had a fashionable decade to be embarrassed about. For a Portuguese family it sits at a useful distance from the heavily-used Portuguese names like João and Miguel; for an English-speaking one it is Simon with a nasal ending, which is either the appeal or the objection.
Middle names for Simão
The nasal ending needs a consonant after it or the two names smear together: Simão Pedro — the apostle's own pairing — Simão Rafael, Simão Duarte, Simão Vicente. The middle names guide explains the smearing problem properly.
Famous Simãos
Simão Rodrigues de Azevedo co-founded the Jesuits and built their Portuguese province. Simão Sabrosa, known everywhere as Simão, won league titles with Benfica and Atlético Madrid and was capped 85 times for Portugal. The apostle Simon the Zealot stands behind both.
Consider instead
Simon is the English form and asks nothing of anybody. Simone is the Italian form, male in Italy and worth knowing about before you use it elsewhere. Tiago is the other Portuguese apostle-name and much the more fashionable of the two.