“Saul, who was also called Paul”
Then Saul, who was also called Paul, filled with the Holy Spirit, looked directly at Elymas (Acts 13:9 BSB)
What it sounds like today
The famous 'name change at conversion,' Saul becoming Paul on the Damascus road.
The cultural key
A myth-buster: there is no renaming, and this verse, years after Damascus, is where the switch happens in the text. Diaspora Jews routinely carried double names, one Hebrew, one Greco-Roman: Sha'ul (after Israel's first king, a fellow Benjaminite) and Paulus, a Roman cognomen he likely bore from birth as a citizen. Luke flips the label at a significant seam: on Cyprus, facing the Roman proconsul Sergius Paulus, as the mission turns decisively toward the Gentile world; the narrative simply starts using the name that world will know him by.
Recovered meaning
Not a conversion rename but a code-switch: the apostle to the Gentiles begins operating under his Roman name at the moment his audience becomes Rome's. Damascus changed the man; Cyprus only changed the byline.