Collected Name Resources from LoARs (2010-present)

Articles from Juliana de Luna, Lillia de Vaux, and Alys Mackyntoich

June 2018 - Alys Mackyntoich Link to LoAR Cover Letter

Given the number of Greek names that have been submitted lately, I was asked to discuss one of the best sources for such names, the Lexicon of Greek Personal Names (LGPN). The LGPN is an index of all known ancient Greek names used by humans up to approximately the 6th century C.E. The LGPN uses the Greek alphabet. For heralds and submitters unfamiliar with the Greek alphabet, Wikipedia's table of Ancient Greek Romanization systems is helpful (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Romanization_of_Greek#Ancient_Greek). SCA names must be registered in transliteration rather than in Ancient Greek characters. The College of Arms has allowed names using both the "Classical" and the "ALA-LC" transliteration schemes.

The LPGN project has produced printed volumes covering different regions of the ancient world (http://www.lgpn.ox.ac.uk/publications/), as well as an online database. The statistics for each volume include lists of the most popular male given names and feminine given names from each region. The LGPB website also contains a general discussion of classical Greek naming structure (http://www.lgpn.ox.ac.uk/names/).

There are two ways to search the LGPN's online database. The new database search (found at http://clas-lgpn2.classics.ox.ac.uk/) retrieves information about individuals. To use this search, hit the "Keyboard" link to enter a name in the Greek alphabet, then hit "Show results" to produce a result of matching names. This search accepts the asterisk * as a wildcard: for example, the search MA* returns all people in the database with names beginning Ma- (Mu-alpha). Results from this search can be sorted in various ways, including by the date ("Floruit" column).

The old complex search (found at http://www.lgpn.ox.ac.uk/database/lgpn.php) is a quick way for an expert user to count the number of times a name is used. To use this search, select "contains" or "starts with", set the input of Greek option to "Symbol font" or "Beta code", enter a partial string of letters corresponding to the Greek letters you're interested in, set the display of Greek option to "Unicode", set the maximum answers to "As many as it takes", and hit Search. Display options other than Unicode may truncate names, so they should be avoided. Note that the old complex search does not include dates.

We thank Ursula Palimpsest for providing the information about this very useful resource.