a Christian: one of Christ's people, in a name coined by outsiders for the followers of Jesus rather than chosen by them
The word is "Christ" plus an ending that Greek borrowed from Latin, the ending used to name a public figure's supporters, household, and hangers-on. Herod's partisans were Herodians; Caesar's men were Caesarians. On that pattern, Christians simply meant "Christ's people," the way a political faction is named after its leader. The shape of the word also hints at who invented it: it treats "Christ" as a personal name rather than as the Jewish title "the anointed one" (Χριστός), which suggests whoever coined it no longer heard that title in the word at all.
All three times the word appears in the New Testament, it is on somebody else's lips, never the community's own:
- Acts reports that the name was first pinned on the disciples at Antioch
- King Agrippa tosses it at Paul as a way of brushing him off
- 1 Peter treats it as the charge a believer might be made to suffer under
The words believers used for themselves at the time were different: "disciples" (μαθηταί), "brothers," "believers," "holy ones," and in Acts "the Way" (ὁδός). Luke, who reports the new name, never adopts it as his own word for them.
1 Peter is where the outsiders' label starts turning into a badge. It warns against suffering as a murderer or a thief, then puts suffering "as a Christian" in that same list, as though the name itself had become a chargeable offense. The response is not to dodge the label but to take it up: do not be ashamed, and honor God by that very name. Within a generation or two the reversal was complete. Ignatius of Antioch wrote about "Christianity" with pride, and martyrs answered their judges with the plain words "I am a Christian."
That a movement gets named from the outside is itself telling. Outsiders needed a fresh label only once believers were no longer simply one more group inside the synagogue, and Antioch, where large numbers of non-Jews had joined, is exactly where you would expect that to happen first. Jewish sources kept using other names for the movement, such as "Nazarene" (Ναζωραῖος) and the word for a party or faction (αἵρεσις).
Whether χρηματίσαι in Acts 11:26 reports that the disciples were given the name Χριστιανοί by others, or that they bore or assumed it themselves. The verb can mean "to bear or be given a name, be styled," and in papyri and inscriptions it carries a public or official flavor.
- majorityThe sense is "came to be called," so the name was applied to the disciples at Antioch by people outside the movement. Luke's own preferred word for insiders remains μαθηταί, which he keeps using afterward.; BDAG, s.v. χρηματίζω; C. K. Barrett, The Acts of the Apostles, International Critical Commentary (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1994 to 1998), on 11:26
- minorityThe verb is active in force, so the disciples styled themselves Χριστιανοί. Bickerman argued that the grammatically correct sense of the related aorist forms in the Fathers is active, and that the passive ἐχρηματίσθησαν in Chrysostom is probably a copyist's error for the active ἐχρημάτισαν.; Elias Bickerman, "The Name of Christians," Harvard Theological Review 42 (1949) 109 to 124
Whether suffering ὡς Χριστιανός in 1 Peter 4:16 presupposes formal legal accusation for the name, or only informal social hostility. The placement of ὡς Χριστιανός in the vice-list of 4:15 (murderer, thief, κακοποιός, ἀλλοτριεπίσκοπος) is the crux, and the answer bears on the letter's date.
- majorityThe suffering is chiefly social: slander, ostracism, and verbal abuse rather than judicial proceedings. On this reading nothing in 1 Peter requires the Trajanic situation, and an earlier date remains open.; John H. Elliott, 1 Peter: A New Translation with Introduction and Commentary, Anchor Bible 37B (New York: Doubleday, 2000); Paul J. Achtemeier, 1 Peter, Hermeneia (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1996)
- minorityThe consensus for purely unofficial hostility should be abandoned: popular hostility and the risk of formal accusation for the Name were interconnected rather than alternatives, as Pliny's correspondence with Trajan (Ep. 10.96 to 97) shows. Horrell further reads the verse as the earliest witness to the label's transvaluation into a claimed self-designation.; David G. Horrell, "The Label Χριστιανός: 1 Peter 4.16 and the Formation of Christian Identity," Journal of Biblical Literature 126 (2007) 361 to 381; Travis B. Williams, Persecution in 1 Peter: Differentiating and Contextualizing Early Christian Suffering, NovTSup 145 (Leiden: Brill, 2012)
Disputed
Who coined Χριστιανός, and whether it began as mockery, as an administrative designation, or as a self-designation. The suffix -ιανός, a Greek borrowing of Latin -ianus, marks the partisans or household of the person named (Caesariani, Ciceroniani, Ἡρωδιανοί), and its treatment of Χριστός as a personal name rather than a title is the shared datum all three positions must explain.
- majorityGentile residents of Antioch coined it as a nickname for a newly visible group, on the pattern of Greek and Latin names for a leader's partisans. Mattingly proposed the Augustiani, Nero's organized claque of applauders, as the specific model, making the coinage a piece of civic mockery.; Harold Mattingly, "The Origin of the Name Christiani," Journal of Theological Studies n.s. 9 (1958) 26 to 37, esp. 27; C. K. Barrett, The Acts of the Apostles, International Critical Commentary (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1994 to 1998), on 11:26; Joseph A. Fitzmyer, The Acts of the Apostles, Anchor Bible 31 (New York: Doubleday, 1998), on 11:26
- minorityRoman authorities at Antioch applied the name as an administrative designation, in connection with public disturbances over the proclamation of Jesus as Messiah, so that Χριστιανοί became bound up with sedition.; Justin Taylor, "Why Were the Disciples First Called Christians at Antioch? (Acts 11, 26)," Revue Biblique 101 (1994) 75 to 94
- minorityThe believers themselves took the name at Antioch. Bickerman conceded that non-Christians almost certainly invented the term, but read the verb of Acts 11:26 actively, so that the disciples styled themselves Christians.; Elias Bickerman, "The Name of Christians," Harvard Theological Review 42 (1949) 109 to 124