Sam Vara wrote: ↑Thu Oct 05, 2017 10:29 amHave I got this completely wrong, and it means something else entirely? All of the other monastics' names seem to refer to positive qualities, so you can probably understand my puzzlement here.
You are right that it's not a regular name for bhikkhus and that it refers to a person professing the wrong view: "There is nothing given... etc."
I've no idea why Björn was given this name. I was once told by the Aussie monk Ajahn Ñāṇadhammo that at one time the Thai monk who was responsible for choosing the Pali names for Ajahn Chah's Western disciples was a bit of a prankster who liked to make up silly names for them. But this was well before Natthiko's time.
One possibility that occurred to me was that it could be an allusion to the dialogue with a brahmin in the Verañjā Sutta:
“I have heard, Master Gotama, ‘the ascetic Gotama is an annihilationist’.”
“There is, brahmin, a way in which one could rightly say of me: ‘The ascetic Gotama is an annihilationist.’ For I assert the annihilation of lust, hatred, and delusion; I assert the annihilation of the numerous kinds of bad unwholesome qualities. It is in this way that one could rightly say of me: ‘The ascetic Gotama is an annihilationist.’ But you did not speak with reference to this.”
https://suttacentral.net/en/an8.11
But if so, then they used the wrong word, for the 'annihilationism' here translates
ucchedavāda not
natthikavāda.