Pop = Djed?

The main column (stake) which supported the roof in old Slavic houses was once called "djed" (grandfather). I talked about this in my post "Baba the main beam that supports the house"...

What is interesting is that in some parts of Serbia (for instance Levče area) this column was also called "pop" (priest).

The word "pop" comes from Old Church Slavonic попъ (popŭ), which from Ancient Greek παπάς (papás) meaning father...Today this means "father of the congregation" but originally this literally meant "the father of the family"...

In Serbia even today it is the oldest man in the family that officiates all the family rituals, which are many. Basically he is playing the role of the family priest...

Now in Serbian the word "baba" (grandmother) also means mother, birth giver, any female ancestor... I talked about this in my post "Baba's day"...

I wonder if the word "djed" (grandfather), once also meant father, any male ancestor...Why? Well, because of an interesting fertility ritual recorded in the Levče area of Serbia.

There is a belief there that a woman which wants to give birth to a male child has to put a placenta from the last birth on the "pop" column, pillar and say "I put you on the priest (pop) so that the priest (pop) can ask god to give me a male child".

Serbian ethnographers and anthropologists believe that this (djed/pop) column once played the role of a house idol, the representation of Dabog, the ancestral deity of all the Serbs, the tribal "djed" (Great, Great, Great...grandfather) of all.

So after Christianisation, this "djed" (male ancestor) column became "pop" (father, male ancestor) column?

Possibly...

Or maybe this comes from the fact that in the Medieval time the local "heretical" Slavic priests from the Balkans were known as "djed" and "starac" (both meaning elder), and "pop" is the literal translation of this term?

The description of the ritual from "Srpski Mitoloski Recnik - Grupa Autora"