Moncunill, N., "From Iberians to Romans. The Latinization of Iberian onomastics through Latin epigraphic evidence", Phoenix 73, 2019, 134-163. (original) (raw)
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The Iberian language is directly attested by ca. 2250 inscriptions spanning the period from the 5 th century BC to the 1 st century AD, distributed between Eastern Andalusia and Languedoc. Although it must be considered a non-deciphered language, a large number of personal names have been identified in Iberian texts. The document that enabled the understanding of the basic structure of Iberian names is a Latin inscription from Italy (the Ascoli Bronze) recording the grant of Roman citizenship to Iberians who had fought for Rome during the Social War (90–88 BC). The study of this document paved the way for the identification of Iberian names in texts written in local languages, on the one hand, and in Latin and Greek epigraphic and literary sources on the other. This paper provides a state-of-the-art overview of research on Iberian onomastics, by synthesising the main recent achievements along with the remaining lines of research; it also investigates our understanding of the grammatical and syntactic structure of Iberian names, and analyses the evolution of Iberian naming patterns under Roman domination, by taking into account both Iberian and Latin documents. Rezumat. Limba iberică este atestată în mod direct de aproximativ 2250 inscripții datând din secolele V a.Chr.–I p.Chr., distribuite între estul Andaluziei și Languedoc. Deși trebuie considerată o limbă nedescifrată, un număr mare de nume de persoane au fost identificate în textele iberice. Documentul care dă posibilitatea înțelegerii structurii de bază a numelor iberice îl constituie o inscripție latină din Italia (bronzul din Ascoli), care înregistrează acordarea cetățeniei romane ibericilor care au luptat pentru Roma în timpul războiului cu socii (90–88 a.Chr.). Studierea acestui document a deschis drumul identificării numelor iberice în textele scrise în limbile locale, pe de o parte, și în inscripțiile grecești și latine, de partea cealaltă. Articolul de față prezintă o trecere în revistă a cercetărilor privind onomastica iberică, sintetizând cele mai recente realizări în domeniu; de asemenea, autoarea investighează gradul de înțelegere a structurii gramaticale și sintactice a numelor iberice și analizează și evoluția tiparelor onomastice iberice sub dominația romană, luând în considerare atât documente iberice, cât și latine.
On Romanization There is a tendency in recent studies on the western Roman Empire to concentrate on cultural features and to stress regional diversity, paying especial attention to the part played by non-Romans in the formation and dynamics of provincial societies. This trend rests on the assumption-one that I share-that integration in the Roman Empire was a dialectical process that transformed not only the western countries but Italy and Rome as well, and that resulted not in homogeneity but in a series of quite diverse provincial societies with evident regional or even local variations.' Privileging culture, non-Roman features and provincial perspectives is quite the reverse of traditional ways of approaching the question: since Mommsen's days the trend in Roman provincial studies has been to seek for traits-mainly political-that might reveal the progress of Romanness in each province.2 To some extent this Roman perspective is unavoidable, given the one-sided character of literary texts which only inscriptions and material remains can partially nuance. But it is also fostered by a vigorous cultural factor. Since classical culture is one of the most powerful roots of European identity, it has been quite natural to adopt the Roman point of view, especially when the classic image of the civilizing empire has been so influential in modern European imperial th0ught.l Thus it is not surprising that the crisis of European colonialisms has led since the 1960s to a rethinking and criticism of this model by trying also to account for indigenous points of view: sometimes by transferring the decolonizing movement to the Roman Empire and thus taking native components in provincial
Conservatism in Language: Framing Latin in Late Antique and Early Medieval Iberia
Languages and Communities in the Late-Roman and Post-Imperial Western Provinces, 2023
In this chapter, I sketch the general features of Latin in the Iberian Peninsula in its late antique and early medieval context: from 400 to 700, in contact with Greek, Hebrew, and trace Germanic and Brythonic elements, and from 700 to 1000, in dialogue with Arabic, Basque, and emerging Hebrew and Romance options. Allowing for the challenges posed by the markedly uneven distribution and transmission of the surviving written evidence, Latin in the Visigothic era operated in a multilingual and multi-register environment, which varied according to geography and socioeconomic situation and reflected distinct levels of educational background, expression, and communicative intention. In the post-Visigothic period, the Christian north is represented by a corpus of everyday documentary Latin, the Muslim south by one of élite literary Latin, giving the impression in comparison of a living versus a dying language. Much debate has focussed on whether the living language in the north was still Latin, but the model of ‘complex monolingualism’ demonstrates how its conservative written form was capable of recording and being pronounced to accommodate evolving and diverse spoken forms incorporating external influences. If the long-term linguistic history of Iberia is dynamic, the Latin of the Peninsula is defined by this basic conservatism, and in conclusion I consider the factors sustaining it by delineating two constraints on the evolution of the language: formulism, or the recourse by scribes to old models for drafting new documents, and reading as hearing, or the recycling of text back into speech by these same scribes.