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Etymology

The name "Pantheon" is from the Ancient Greek "Pantheion" (Πάνθειον) meaning "of, relating to, or common to all the gods": (pan- / "παν-" meaning "all" + theion / "θεῖον"= meaning "of or sacred to a god"). The simplest explanation for the name is that the Pantheon was a temple dedicated to all the gods. However, the concept of a temple dedicated to all the gods has been questioned. Ziegler tried to collect evidence of pantheons, but his list consists of simple dedications "to all the gods" or "to the Twelve Gods", which are not necessarily true pantheons in the sense of a temple housing a cult that literally worships all the gods. The only definite pantheon recorded earlier than Agrippa's was at Antioch in Syria, though it is only mentioned by a sixth-century source. Cassius Dio, a Roman senator who wrote in Greek, speculated that the name of the Pantheon comes either from the statues of many gods placed around this building, or from the resemblance of the dome to the heavens. According to Adam Ziolkowski, this uncertainty strongly suggests that "Pantheon" (or Pantheum) was merely a nickname, not the formal name of the building.

Godfrey and Hemsoll point out that ancient authors never refer to Hadrian's Pantheon with the word aedes, as they do with other temples, and the Severan inscription carved on the architrave uses simply "Pantheum", not "Aedes Panthei" (temple of all the gods). Livy wrote that it had been decreed that temple buildings (or perhaps temple cellae) should only be dedicated to single divinities, so that it would be clear who would be offended if, for example, the building was struck by lightning, and because it was only appropriate to offer sacrifice to a specific deity (27.25.7–10). Godfrey and Hemsoll maintain that the word Pantheon "need not denote a particular group of gods, or, indeed, even all the gods, since it could well have had other meanings.... Certainly the word pantheus or pantheos, could be applicable to individual deities.... Bearing in mind also that the Greek word θεῖος (theios) need not mean 'of a god' but could mean ' superhuman ', or even 'excellent'."

Since the French Revolution, when the church of Sainte-Geneviève in Paris was deconsecrated and turned into the secular monument called the Panthéon of Paris, the generic term pantheon has sometimes been applied to other buildings in which illustrious dead are honoured or buried.