Templon - Etymology

Etymology

Templon is a loan word in Greek, from the Latin templum, "temple"; how and why it came to have its present meaning is unclear. The most obvious explanation is that the form of the templon resembles a pagan temple. The steps up to the apse (semicircle where the altar is located) are analogous to the stereobate and stylobate of the temple (the floor of a temple). The colonnettes arranged in the π shape resemble the columns that surround all four sides of a temple, the architrave looks like the architrave on a temple, and the carved disks on the architrave are analogous to the metopes on the entablature. However, it has also been suggested that the name templon derives not from the pagan temples but from the Christian idea of the shrine where God was worshipped, or more specifically the Temple in Jerusalem. In almost all modern European languages, the word templon is a direct and late borrowing of the Greek architectural term, and it is rarely found outside the academic usage; besides the Greek templon, another direct descendant of the Latin templum, having the same architectural meaning, is the Romanian word tâmplă, "iconostasis".