Ancient Greek personal names
The names are found in literary texts, on coins and stamped amphora handles, on potsherds used in ostracisms, and, much more abundantly, in inscriptions and (in Egypt) on papyri.
Many standard names related to specific masculine achievements had a common feminine equivalent; the counterpart of Nikomachos, "victorious in battle", would be Nikomachē.
The taste mentioned above for giving family members related names was one motive for the creation of such feminine forms.
Perhaps by extension of this usage, women's names were sometimes formed from men's by a change to a neuter ending without the diminutive sense: Hilaron from hilaros, "cheerful".
There were five main personal name types in Greece:[7] Demosthenes is compounded from two ordinary Greek roots (a structure at least as old as Proto-Indo-European):[8] demos "people" and sthenos "strength".
A vast number of Greek names have this form, being compounded from two recognizable (though sometimes shortened) elements: Nikomachos from nike "victory" and mache "battle", Sophokles from sophos "wise, skilled" and kleos "glory", Polykrates from poly "much" and kratos "power".
The elements used in these compounds are typically positive and of good omen, stressing such ideas as beauty, strength, bravery, victory, glory, and horsemanship.
Thus alongside the many names beginning with Kall- "beauty" such as Kallinikos "of fair victory", there are shortened Kallias and Kallon (masculine) or Kallis (feminine).
For instance, some twenty different names are formed from aischros "ugly", including that of the poet we know as Aeschylus, the Latin spelling of Aischylos.
Among the many different categories of nouns and adjectives from which the most common names derive are colors (Xanthos "yellow"), animals (Moschos "heifer", and Dorkas "roe deer"), physical characteristics (Simos "snub nose"), parts of the body (Kephalos, from kephale "head", and many from various slang terms for genitalia).
Some, to our ears, sound positively disrespectful: Gastron "pot belly", Batrachos "frog", Kopreus "shitty", but these are probably by origin affectionate nicknames, in many cases applied to small children, and subsequently carried on within families.
When new gods rose to prominence (Asklepios) or entered Greece from outside (Isis, Sarapis), they too generated theophoric names formed in the normal ways (e.g. Asklepiodotos, Isidoros, Sarapias).
[14] This is true also of the epic poetry of Homer, where many heroes have compound names of familiar types (Alexandros, Alkinoos, Amphimakhos).
The system described above underwent few changes before the Roman period, though the rise of Macedonia to power earned names of that region such as Ptolemaios, Berenike, and Arsinoe new popularity.
Alternative names ("X also known as Y") started to appear in documents in the 2nd century BC but had been occasionally mentioned in literary sources much earlier.
[15] Many Greek names have come down by various routes into modern English, some easily recognisable such as Helen or Alexander, some modified such as Denis (from Dionysios).
Names are particularly important in situations of cultural contact: they may answer the question whether a particular city is Greek or non-Greek, and document the shifts and complexities in ethnic self-identification even within individual families.
Bechtel (1917)[24] is still the main work that seeks to explain the formation and meaning of Greek names, although the studies of O. Masson et al. collected in Onomastica Graeca Selecta (1990–2000)[25] have constantly to be consulted.
The fundamental starting point is now the multi-volume A Lexicon of Greek Personal Names, founded by P.M. Fraser and still being extended with the collaboration of many scholars.
