Within the great diversity of their world, the assertion of origin was essential to the ancient Greeks in defining their sense of who they were and how they distinguished themselves from neighbours and strangers. Each person's name might carry both identity and origin - 'I am' . . . inseparable from 'I come from' . . . Names have surfaced in many guises and locations - on coins and artefacts, embedded within inscriptions and manuscripts - carrying with them evidence even from prehistoric and preliterate times. The Lexicon of Greek Personal Names has already identified more than 200,000 individuals. The contributors to this volume draw on this resource to demonstrate the breadth of scholarly uses to which name evidence can be put. These essays narrate the stories of political and social change revealed by the incidence of personal names and cast a fascinating light upon both the natural and supernatural phenomena which inspired them. This volume offers dramatic illumination of the ways in which the ancient Greeks both created and interpreted their world through the specific language of personal names.

The world's most authorative dictionary of ancient Greek. The world's most comprehensive and authoritative dictionary of ancient Greek is now revised and available with a new Supplement. This major event in classical scholarship, edited by Peter Glare, is the culmination of 13 years' painstaking work overseen by a committee appointed by the British Academy, and involving the cooperation of many experts from around the world. The Main Dictionary; Liddell and Scott's Greek-English Lexicon, is the central reference work for all scholars of ancient Greek, author and text discovered up to 1940, from the 11th centruey BC to the Byzantine Period. The early Greek of authors such as Homer and Hesiod, Classical Greek, and the Greek Old and New Testaments are included. Each entry lists not only the definition of a word, but also its irregular inflections, and quotations from a full range of authors and sources to demonstrate usage.

A Lexicon of Greek Personal Names offers scholars a comprehensive listing of all named individuals from the ancient Greek-speaking world. The present volume, VA, covers Asia Minor (modern Turkey), a particularly interesting area because of its ethnic and cultural diversity.

Changing Names investigates, in relation to the ancient Greek world, the ways in which preferences in personal name-giving change: through shifts in population, cultural contact and imperialism, the popularity of new gods, celebrity status of individuals, increased openness to external influence, and shifts in local fashion. Several major kinds of change due to cultural contact occurred: Greek names spread in regions outside Greece that were subject to Greek cultural influence (and later conquest), while conversely the Roman conquest of the Greek world led to various degrees of adoption of the Roman naming system; late in antiquity, Christianisation led to a profound but rather gradual transformation of the name stock. Individuals in culturally mixed societies sometimes bore two names, one for public or official use, one more domestic; but women of non-Greek origin were more likely to stick with indigenous names. 'Structural' changes (such as the emergence of the English surname) did not occur, though in late antiquity an indication of profession tended to replace the father's name as a secondary identifier; in some regions 'second' names became popular, perhaps in imitation of the longer Roman naming formulae. The volume is arranged partly thematically, partly through regional case studies (from within and beyond old Greece). Individuals who change their names (typically slaves after manumission) are also considered, as is the possibility that a name might change its 'meaning'.

This lexicon provides scholars and students of Greek civilization with a list, supported by evidence, of personal names known from literature, inscriptions, papyri, vases, coins, and other objects dating from the earliest period to the 7th century A.D. It promises to replace the mid-19th-century work of Pape and Benseler and offer fresh impetus to a wide range of historical and literary research. Produced under the auspices of the British Academy, the complete lexicon will be published in six volumes.

In this handbook, scholars from around the world offer an up-to-date account of the state of the art in different areas of onomastics, in a format that is both useful to specialists in related fields and accessible to the general reader. Since Ancient Greece, names have been regarded as central to the study of language, and this has continued to be a major theme of both philosophical and linguistic enquiry throughout the history of Western thought. The investigation of name origins is more recent, as is the study of names in literature. Relatively new is the study of names in society, which draws on techniques from sociolinguistics and has gradually been gathering momentum over the last few decades. The structure of this volume reflects the emergence of the main branches of name studies, in roughly chronological order. The first Part focuses on name theory and outlines key issues about the role of names in language, focusing on grammar, meaning, and discourse. Parts II and III deal with the study of place-names and personal names respectively, while Part IV outlines contrasting approaches to the study of names in literature, with case studies from different languages and time periods. Part V explores the field of socio-onomastics, with chapters relating to the names of people, places, and commercial products. Part VI then examines the interdisciplinary nature of name studies, before the concluding Part presents a selection of animate and inanimate referents ranging from aircraft to animals, and explains the naming strategies adopted for them.

This is the seventh volume of the Lexicon of Greek Personal Names to be published, a work which offers comprehensive documentation of named individuals in the Greek-speaking world in the period from c. 700 BC to 600 AD, drawn from all sources (predominantly written in Greek and to a lesser extent in Latin). It is the second of three volumes that comprise the personal names attested in Asia Minor. This particular volume is concerned with its southern coast, incorporating the ancient regions of Caria, Lycia, Pamphylia, and Cilicia, and thus completes coverage of the coastal regions. The volume documents more than 44,500 individuals who between them bore in excess of 8,400 different names. In contrast to those parts of Asia Minor facing the Aegean, Propontis, and Black Sea, there was little Greek settlement along the southern coast. So, in this volume particular interest attaches to the very large number of non-Greek names originating in the languages of the indigenous peoples of these regions - Carian, Lycian, Sidetic, and Pisidian - all of them descended from the Hittite-Luwian languages spoken in Anatolia in the second and early first millennia BC. The volume provides the raw material that allows us to see how indigenous names gave way first to Greek and later to Latin names, and how the pace of these changes varies from one region to another as one aspect of those processes of acculturation labelled as 'hellenization' and 'Romanization'. It contains a detailed introduction which addresses the definition of each of the regions and their cultural identity in terms both of geography and language and onomastics. It also guides the user through some of the problems of topography, dialect, and the treatment of non-Greek names, as well as providing some detailed statistics that point to interesting regional patterns.

'Ancient Greek and Semitic languages resorted to a large range of words to name the divine. Gods and goddesses were called by a variety of names and combinations of onomastic attributes. This broad lexicon of names is characterised by plurality and a tendency to build on different sequences of names; therefore, the Mapping Ancient Polytheisms project focuses on the process of naming the divine in order to better understand the ancient divine in terms of a plurality in the making. A fundamental rule for reading ancient divine names is to grasp them in their context - time and place, a ritual, the form of the discourse, a cultural milieu...: a deity is usually named according to a specific situation. From Artemis Eulochia to al-Lat, al-'Uzza and Manat, from Melqart to "my rock" in the biblical book of Psalms, this volume journeys between the sanctuary on Mount Gerizim and late antique magical practices, revisiting rituals, hymnic poetry, oaths of orators and philosophical prayers. While targeting different names in different contexts, the contributors draft theoretical propositions towards a dynamic approach of naming the divine in antiquity.'

From even before the time of Alexander the Great, the Greek gods spread throughout the Mediterranean, carried by settlers and largely adopted by the indigenous populations. By the third century b.c., gods bearing Greek names were worshipped everywhere from Spain to Afghanistan, with the resulting religious systems a variable blend of Greek and indigenous elements. Greek Gods Abroad examines the interaction between Greek religion and the cultures of the eastern Mediterranean with which it came into contact. Robert Parker shows how Greek conventions for naming gods were extended and adapted and provides bold new insights into religious and psychological values across the Mediterranean. The result is a rich portrait of ancient polytheism as it was practiced over 600 years of history.

In this comprehensive and accessible sourcebook, Ilias Arnaoutoglou presents a collection of ancient Greek laws, which are situated in their legal and historical contexts and are elucidated with relevant selections from Greek literature and epigraphical testimonies. A wide area of legislative activity in major and minor Greek city-states, ranging from Delphoi and Athens in mainland Greece, to Gortyn in Crete, Olbia in South Russia and Aegean cities including Ephesos, Samos and Thasos, is covered. Ilias Arnaoutoglou divides legislation into three main areas: * the household - marriage, divorce, inheritance, adoption, sexual offences and personal status * the market-place - trade, finance, sale, coinage and leases * the state - constitution, legislative process, public duties, colonies, building activities, naval forces, penal regulations, religion, politics and inter-state affairs. Dr Arnaoutoglou explores the significance of legislation in ancient Greece, the differences and similarities between ancient Greek legislation and legislators and their modern counterparts and also provides fresh translations of the legal documents themselves.