Some Observations on Late Urukean Theophoric Names (original) (raw)
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This paper aims to survey the onomastics of Babylonian women in the Neo-Babylonian and Achaemenid periods (from the end of the 8 th century BC to the end of the 4 th century BC). After the introduction, we discuss Akkadian personal names on the basis of abundant Neo-Babylonian socio-economic texts. Our database shows that there were several popular categories of names for newborn girls. While most names could be given to women belonging to different social groups, we also observe the social homogeneity of those bearing certain names or categories of names. In the third section, we will discuss the recurrence of some particular theophoric elements, which allows us to assess the roles and statues of several goddesses, such as Ba'u, Mullissu, Ištar and Nanaya. Finally, the fourth section deals with non-Babylonian names: on the one hand, a sample of names that occur in the Āl-Yāḫūdu archives and showing cases of assimilation of Judean community to the Babylonian people, and on the other hand other foreign names, like Iranian names, borne by Babylonian individuals in the first millennium BC.
What's in a Divine Name? Religious Systems and Human Agency in the Ancient Mediterranean, 2024
Theophoric personal names simultaneously serve to identify an individual and make a statement about the deity invoked by each name. These personal names, this study argues, can be considered primary sources in their most essential form, reflecting one facet of a human attitude toward the divine that is otherwise free from the theological bias of an editor or redactor. Containing both onymic and semantic value, theophoric personal names can be read alongside divine epithets as they both shed light on humankind's perception of the gods. This chapter explores theophoric personal names in the Aramaic speaking world of diasporic and cosmopolitan Elephantine during the Persian period in order to seek insight into questions of how human names depict the complex and interrelated religious landscapes of multi-cultural communities. The rich theological landscape of Persian period Egypt as evidenced in Aramaic personal names demonstrates a confluence of cultures and religious traditions.
Anatolian Names in -wiya and the Structure of Empire Luwian Onomastics
Anatolian Interfaces: Culture, Language and Religion between Anatolia and the Aegean. Mouton, Rutherford and Yakubovich (eds.). Leiden: Brill, 2013
In the first part of the paper I propose a new etymology for the Anatolian onomastic element -wiya. In its second part I address more general issues related to the structure of Anatolian personal names from Hattusa, arguing in particular that the bulk of personal names outwardly derived from place-names are, in fact, hidden theophoric compounds. In the appendix I address the debatable points that were discussed in connection with my book "Sociolinguistics of the Luvian Language" on the wake of its publication.