to celebrate one’s saint’s day

09:16 Feb 3, 2013 

I imagine that most of your Christian vocabulary in Persian comes from that of the Orthodox Christians, as most Armenians and Suryani are orthodox.

This may seem an obvious point, but actually I think it's important, as some terms in Orthodoxy are peculiar to Orthodoxy and have no equivalents amongst Roman Catholics and Protestants. "Agios/Agia" and "Panagia" are perhaps the best examples.

Of course, I realize that Orthodoxy is far from uniform, and the Church of the East and the Coptic Church are very different from Greek Orthodoxy etc, but I think one can speak of a shared religious culture, and in particular a shared religious language.