There are two distinct communities conducting research in the domain of Ancient Anatolian personal names. On the one hand, a number of Classicists show a keen interest in this area, in particular through their contributions to the Asia Minor volumes of the Lexicon of Greek Personal Names (LGPN). On the other hand, the study of ‘indigenous’ (i.e. pre-Greek) personal names of Asia Minor is associated with a smaller group of scholars, sometimes with a background in Indo-European Comparative Linguistics or Ancient Near Eastern Studies. There are certain differences in the approaches to the study of onomastics that characterise these professional communities.
The peculiarity of the sociolinguistic situation in pre-Hellenic Anatolia, in contrast to, for example, Mesopotamia or Greece, is a bewildering variety of distinct languages spoken in the overlapping areas and attested to different extents. Therefore Hittitologists and other specialists in Bronze and Early Iron Age Asia Minor tend to be very sensitive to differences in the linguistic backgrounds of personal names, to the point that sometimes determining such a background represents the main goal of their research. By contrast, the onomastic systems of individual languages or groups have rarely been holistically investigated. Only recently have publications appeared that attempt to describe systematically the structure of Indo-European Anatolian names, such as Die hethitischen Frauennamen by T. Zehnder (2010).
In contrast to specialists in, say, Lydian or Phrygian, the Hellenists who work on the Greek names of Asia Minor normally have a good understanding of their etymologies. They are, therefore, well equipped to investigate variation in the structure of Greek onomastics throughout the Hellenic world. The study of patterns and trends in name-giving increasingly takes the place of atomistic research on the origins of individual names. On the other hand, most people who belong to this community lack systematic training in the languages of Ancient Anatolia other than Greek, which impedes tracing the continuity of onomastic patterns in this region across time. The situation may change, however, when more easy-to-handle reference sources on the etymology of personal names emerge on the ‘indigenous’ side.
One of the recurring themes of the volume, which arose out of an LGPN colloquium held at Wadham College, Oxford in Summer 2011, is bridging the gap between the two paradigms under discussion. P. stresses in the first introductory chapter that both the sound shapes and structures of pre-Greek names were likely to survive the Hellenisation of Asia Minor. Thus Hermes is the most frequent theonym embedded in Greek theophoric names from Lycia, presumably because it echoes the name of the local moon-god er
me-, while the Carian name Natrbbijẽmi is calqued as Appolodotus in the Greek version of the trilingual N320 (pp. 5–6). C. Brixhe, famous for his contributions to both Greek and Phrygian philology, discusses the available reference works on ‘indigenous’ onomastics (pp. 18–20) and laments the lack of interest for this topic in the work of L. Robert (pp. 23–4). A. Çoşkun displays familiarity with the structure of Galatian names of Celtic origin (pp. 84–6) and addresses instances of continuity in the transition from Celtic to Greek name-giving in Galatia (pp. 88–9).
But the most tangible practical contribution to linking the work of the two communities belongs to C. Melchert. His paper on the naming practices in Second- and First-Millennium Western Anatolia provides a formal classification of types of personal names occurring in the continuum of the Luwic languages. Although the bulk of examples treated are taken from pre-Greek sources, it is to be stressed that the same structural patterns characterise the corpus of Luwic names attested in Greek alphabetic transmission. All the examples are provided with full ‘translations’, e.g. the name of the Carian king Μα-υσσωλλος is explained as ‘much-blessed’ (I would personally prefer ‘very-dear’). Melchert's paper could obviously cover only a tiny portion of Luwic personal names, but it sets up a methodological framework for their analysis. One hopes that in the future this task will be taken over by another scholar with the intention of preparing a Luwic onomastic dictionary, which in turn can be used for comparative purposes by Classical philologists.
Melchert's innovative work can be contrasted with the more traditional approach to the study of ‘indigenous’ onomastics, which prevails in the contribution of A. Avram. The non-Greek names associated with Heraclea Pontica are classified according to their assumed origin. Thus the name Θυς is said to be Paphlagonian, while Αδα is classified as a Lallname with Carian connections, and Αττης is assigned a generic label ‘Anatolian’. The analysis is performed with references to secondary sources, among which Zgusta's Kleinasiatische Personnennamen [1964] is mentioned particularly frequently. On the whole, neither Avram nor Zgusta addresses the structure of non-Greek names, but they tend to rather label them based on the geographic areas of their occurrence. In defence of Avram's stance one can say that the onomastic material selected for his study largely consists of rather short names, the linguistic analysis of which is likely to yield uncertain results.
The other contributions concentrate on issues concerned, in whole or in part, with the Greek stratum of Anatolian onomastics. M. Adak discusses the dynamics of Hellenisation in the town of Phaselis in the Pamphylian-Lycian borderland, which suffered an abrupt setback when the local Greek pirates were repressed by the Romans around 77 b.c. C. Curbera argues at some length that the Ionian non-compound personal names of humbler meaning originated as playful designations of young children, which had no pejorative connotations in such a context. R. van Bremen supplies arguments in favour of the Thessalian inspiration of the Anatolian names Ἀγροίτος and Ἀγρεοφῶν and disputes the claim that they refer to the local deities of the open field. It appears that she attributes particular intrinsic virtue to ‘an interpretation that moves away from “epichoric” explanations’ (p. 160).
C. Marek focuses on Hellenistic personal names derived from names of luxury items, such as incense and precious stones. He proposes that this cluster reflected some ‘vague allusion to luxury’ (p. 194), but it seems at least equally likely that it represented a metaphor for the attachment of parents to their children. The second contribution of C. Curbera deals with a heterogeneous group of names whose etymology or functional interpretation causes difficulties, for example Χρύσωρος, lit. ‘watcher of gold’. The concluding paper by A. Chaniotis describes the extended Greek onomastic formula, common in Roman Aphrodisias, which was formed by adding a second name after a chain of patronymics. Chaniotis plausibly hypothesises that such a pattern reflects the influence of the Roman cognomina and supernomina.
The book was not designed as a reference source but rather represents a cross-cut of the current state of research in the field, as befits a conference proceedings volume. It bears witness to a growing interest for drawing sociolinguistic generalisations from the study of onomastic data and emerging collaboration between Classical and Ancient Near Eastern philologists in this domain.
