Medicine Woman said:
The Aramaic glossary online indicates Paul's name aptly means 'deceiver.' I'm curious why he would rename himself Paul? I never thought that Paul was a name in those days, but Ap-pol-onius was.
I can't think of any circumstance in which 'Paul' would have actually meant 'deceiver' in the common language of the day. It would not have helped him, and Paul was nothing if not an opportunist. And then, even by his own account, he was always answering accusations of being a liar and an embezzler, and if his name gave any warrant to those accusations, then it certainly would have come up in puns, ridicule, and so forth.
I simply think that your Aramaic Source was doctored after the fact, as some kind of joke among scholars... or perhaps even an ill-bred instance of hostility as old Jewish or Islamic Scholars take a cheap shot at the Christian Scholastic Community while sacrificing the Truth to do so.
Or perhaps the connotation of 'deceiver' did not come to the name until Paul wore it. It is like the way Americans toss around "Benedict Arnold" to mean "traitor" (though it is odd that they should term a 'traitor' the only one among themselves to keep loyal to the original oath they made upon entering Public Service, which was for loyalty to their King). Or the contemptable meaning that is expressed by name "Judas" which had not always attached to that name. (I was shocked to find the name "adolf" coming back. At a party of people who were not Neo-Nazis this one man was introduced to me as Adolf and I could only barely restrain myself from asking if he were insane, and to point out that no judge in the World would keep him from changing THAT name and would probably even pay the Court Costs for him).
So I would guess that before Paul made the name of 'paul' mean 'deceiver' that it quite meant something else, which perhaps scholarship has forgotten, Aramaic being a dead language from which there are apparently no sources dating back to prior the Age of Christianity. We will then never know.