What is a Hero?

Having listened to a professor from Concordia Seminary during an introduction to Greek the other day, I found the following very interesting thing.

I do not know if it is a historical fact or not, but the coincidence is stunning.

The professor pointed out that the image at right (known as the Labarum and often used in orthodox Christian groups) is made up of two characters of the Greek alphabet: chi and rho. (Seen below.)

Chi:

Rho:

These characters are used on the Labarum because they are the first 2 letters of the word for Christ, or Christos: Χριστός.

It was introduced by Constantine to be worn by Roman soldiers. The politics behind it we will ignore for now, but here is the cool.

The REALLY cool thing is the way he pronounced it.
"kheee-ro"; hero.

Obviously, the word "hero" is not newly introduced by the Labarum. Hero was a female character presented in Greek mythology around 5 BC.

Regardless, thought I, that is entirely amusing that whenever we refer to a hero or use the term, God is also potentially being glorified, albeit in another language. How often we use terms that have so much more significance than we are aware of?

(The history on the Labarum in amazing. Check it here on Wikipedia.)