Greek Feminine Given Names from Thera

by Viscontessa Elisabetta Tommaso di Carduci (mka Jillian Johnson)

[email protected]

24.2.2023

Go straight to the names list

Introduction

My aim for this article was to provide a moderately large dataset of transliterated Ancient Greek names. To that end, I chose to focus on the island of Thera, modernly known as Santorini (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Santorini). This choice was based on a number of factors, primarily among them the size of the dataset. While places such as Delos and Athens contain more data, the number of names was overwhelming as a first project in this language. With the significantly smaller dataset from Thera, I could then further pare down the category to just the feminine names and have it be a manageable set of data to work with. It also resulted in a good-sized list of names, giving potential submitters lots of choices. Additionally, I chose a location that did not shift from a pitch-accent language to a stress-accent language during the time period covered by the database, the “late 8th c BCE to about 600 CE”.

During the process of transliterating the names, I learned a lot of new things about the language we call Ancient Greek. I have tried to summarize these below to help others who might be interested in doing a similar exercise with the source data; there are plenty of more places to collect and transliterate the names from.

Throughout this article, I provide a number of links to Wikipedia. A gentle reminder: Wikipedia is not documentation. Wikipedia does, however, provide a good overview and general understanding of this source material. These particular articles at Wikipedia are laden with citations and external links to follow which can guide those interested to a more thorough and scholarly understanding of this information.

The Source

These given names were pulled from the Lexicon of Greek Personal Names (LGPN), which is found online at https://www.lgpn.ox.ac.uk/. From its website, “The Lexicon of Greek Personal Names (LGPN) traces every bearer of every name, drawing on a huge variety of evidence, from personal tombstones, dedications, works of art, to civic decrees, treaties, citizen-lists, artefacts, graffiti etc.: in other words, from all Greek literary sources, documentary sources (inscriptions and papyri), coins, and artefacts.  …. from the late 8th c BCE to about 600 CE.”

The LGPN is currently undergoing some reorganization on its back end that periodically breaks some of its internal links. As of February 2023, most of the links to date and source abbreviations and additional explanations are broken. I am hopeful that in the future the project will be able to restore these for scholars using the resource.

The Data

The online version of the LGPN, http://clas-lgpn2.classics.ox.ac.uk/, includes a ‘Place catalogue’. Out of the 1658 records in the “Thera” category, only 205 of them were marked as feminine names. Of the 205 feminine names, 12 of them appear twice, 9 appear three times, 1 appears four times and 1 appears 6 times. This means there are 167 unique names that appear in the data, giving us a sizable data set. I have left all of the duplicate names in the list, so that they can be identified easily.

Many names were a surprise, such as those ending in -polis. This suffix in Greek means ‘city’, and it would not seem to be appropriate in given names. However, they were identified as given names in the source material, and I have included them here for consistency.

Some of the names and dates have a ? beside them. I have left these where they occur in the source material, as they indicate that the data on the original artifact is uncertain or might not be clear.

The date column is labeled Floruit as it is in the LGPN. This word comes to English from Latin flōrēre ‘to flourish’ and is “[o]ccasionally used for [t]he period during which a person ‘flourished’” (Oxford English Dictionary s.v. floruit, n. [https://www.oed.com/view/Entry/71905, subscription required], https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Floruit). In this column are the abbreviations hell., imp. and byz.; these represent hellenistic, imperial and byzantine respectively and the transition between them varies per region. In general, scholars agree on some overall dates; given the history of settlements on Thera, these dates likely hold true for this region:

• The hellenistic period falls between the death of Alexander the Great in 323 BCE and the rise of Augustus in Rome in 31 BCE; at its end all Greek holdings of Alexander belong to Rome (https://www.history.com/topics/ancient-greece/hellenistic-greece).
• The imperial period starts with the rise of Augustus and ends with the fall of Rome in 476 CE (https://education.nationalgeographic.org/resource/imperial-rome/).
• The byzantine period begins with the fall of Rome and lasts until the fall of Constantinople in 1454 CE (https://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/byza/hd_byza.htm).

No data in the LGPN is dated later than circa 600 CE, so for purposes of this article the byzantine period ends at that date.

Further, sometimes the dates are written in lowercase Roman numerals, sometimes they are written in a mix of uppercase and lowercase letters and sometimes they are written in Arabic numerals. For purposes of citing a date from this article: 1) where only lowercase Roman numerals appear, they are centuries (for example, ii-iii AD), 2) where lowercase and uppercase letters appear, they represent part of a century (for example, Mvii BC is the middle of the 7th century BC), and 3) where Arabic numerals appear, they are years. Letters that might appear to indicate parts of centuries are f (first half), s (second half) and m (middle). These markings are not consistent as to whether they appear as a capital letter (?Fvi BC) or lowercase letter (s. iv BC), nor are they consistent as to whether or not a period or space appears after them (s.iii BC).  In all cases, I have reproduced the date faithfully as it appears in the source material here in the article.

Names that are in bold are found as feminine in Thera but masculine in other regions. Names that are in bold and also italics are found as both masculine and feminine in Thera. There is only one such name in the list: Μόλλις.

For more information about the LGPN editorial practices, see the guidelines that are outlined at https://www.lgpn.ox.ac.uk/editorial-practice. See also: Matthews, Elaine, and Sebastian Rahtz. “The ‘Lexicon of Greek Personal Names’ and Classical Web Services.” Bulletin of the Institute of Classical Studies. Supplement, no. 122 (2013): 107–24. http://www.jstor.org/stable/44216326.

About the Transliterations

There are two valid ways to transliterate a name in classical Greek that I use in this list of names. One system was used by the ancient Romans. The other system is used by modern Classicists, and it more closely matches the classical Greek pronunciation as we understand it today. In the modern Classicist system, there is a way to distinguish epsilon (e) from eta (ē) and omicron (o) from omega (ō). It also includes both vowels in the vowel clusters ei (epsilon-iota) and ou (omicron-upsilon). This makes it easier to go backwards from the transliteration of a name to the original spelling. I have included both transliterations here so that it is easy to see the differences between them and decide which system most fits the spelling desired. A reminder: per SENA Appendix D, the SCA College of Arms requires all elements in each name submitted to follow the same transliteration system.

Regarding Authenticity for Theran Names

Some of the names in this list are unique to Thera, meaning they are only found in this location in the LGPN. I have marked these names in red. These names amount to 36% of the data, which was surprising. This represents the wide variety of influences on the island from Ptolemaic Egypt all the way to the Byzantine Empire, and also its relative isolation from the rest of the Greek-influenced world. Some of the names that are not in red differ from the header form in spelling when they are found in Thera. I would encourage those seeking a name authentic to Thera to look up their desired name in the LGPN directly. Any alternate spelling will be found in the references column, shown in the image below with the name Ἀγαθόκλεια where the references column says SEG XVI 472 (–κληα):

This would render a different transliteration based on whichever system you choose for your name. In the case of our example, Ἀγαθόκλεια, the alternate spelling becomes Ἀγαθόκληα given the alternate ending found in our references column. The Greek given name Ἀγαθόκληα is transliterated as Agathoclea in Ancient Roman or Agathoklēa in Modern Classicist. Note that the Modern Classicist transliteration of the alternate spelling, Agathoklēa, differs from the Modern Classicist transliteration of the header spelling found in the table of names below, Agathokleia; the Ancient Roman transliteration remains the same. Either Greek spelling’s Modern Classicist transliteration would be permitted for registration, but only the alternate spelling’s Modern Classicist transliteration (Agathoklēa) would be considered authentic for Thera by the current standard of the SCA College of Arms (as of February 2023).

Ancient Greek Transliteration, Pronunciation and Diacritical Markings

In both the Ancient Roman and Modern Classicist transliteration systems, the acute accents (´) do not modify the vowels the way that they do in other languages. An acute accent on a vowel indicates which of the syllables has the highest tone, or pitch. Ancient Greek, therefore, is a pitch-accent language (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pitch-accent_language#Ancient_Greek). This informs a lot of the pronunciation, as it feels more musical than its modern counterpart.

The other pitch accent seen in this dataset is the circumflex, marked with a tilde (~). While the symbol most commonly used to represent the circumflex is ^, the data in the source material consistently uses the tilde instead; it more closely reflects the meaning of the original Greek word. I have, therefore, preserved this in my transliteration. The English word circumflex derives (through Latin circumflexus) from the Greek word perispōménē meaning ‘twisted around’. A circumflex will only be seen on the second vowel of a diphthong, such as in the given name Ἐπικτοῦς, or over a long vowel, such as in the given name Πρῖμα. The pitch rises and then falls within the same syllable, as opposed to the acute accent which only causes its affected syllable to rise in pitch.

Some dialects towards the end of the period covered by the LGPN gradually shift from the pitch-accent Ancient Greek to the stress-accent Hellenistic Greek, or Koine Greek (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Koine_Greek). Some dialects never make this shift. Where Thera is located, it is unlikely that the language ever made this shift during the period of time that this data covers (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Koine_Greek#/media/File:Hellenistic_Greek.png).

The next most frequent diacritical markings indicate rough breathing and smooth breathing. Rough breathing indicates the presence of an aspirated h, like in the English name Hannah. It is shown with the diacritical marking ῾, such as in the given names ῾Αγεμώνα and ῾Ιλάρα. It resembles an opening single apostrophe. This diacritical marking will generally appear in one of two places: before an initial vowel or before/atop the letter rho. When preceding an initial vowel, this adds the aspirated h to the beginning of the name; i.e. ῾Ιλάρα is pronounced Hilara. When added to the character rho, it becomes the consonant cluster rh; i.e. Ῥόδα is pronounced Rhoda, where the h softens the r consonant from its normal trilled state to an alveolar approximant state. The letter r is a rhotic consonant, and the difference between r and rh is slight. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rhotic_consonant) See Appendix A for further information.

Smooth breathing, by contrast, indicates the absence of an aspirated h at the beginning of a name that starts with a vowel sound, like the English name Anna. The diacritical marking that shows this is ᾿. It resembles a closing single apostrophe. In this dataset, I have only encountered this mark before an initial vowel, such as in the given name Ἐπιτέλεια, or atop the second letter of an initial vowel cluster, such as in the given name Αἴνησις. A smooth breathing mark may appear combined with an acute pitch accent. This is denoted by ῎, such as in the name ῎Aνα.

Another mark that aids pronunciation is the diaeresis (¨). This rare diacritical marking can only appear on the letters iota and upsilon, and it can never appear on the first letter of a name. The English word diaeresis comes from the Greek word diaíresis, meaning ‘division’ or ‘separation’. It is placed on the second letter of a vowel cluster to indicate that the two vowels should be pronounced separately rather than as a diphthong, such as in the English word naïve. There is only one of these marks that appears in this dataset and it is in the given name Κλεοδαΐς. In this name, you can also see the diaeresis combined with the acute pitch accent.

For a more in-depth and technical description of Ancient Greek’s pitch accent phonetics, see “Dionysius of Halicarnassus, De Compositione Verborum XI: Reconstructing the Phonetics of the Greek Accent” by A. M. Devine and Laurence D. Stephens [Transactions of the American Philological Association (1974-2014) Vol. 121 (1991), pp. 229-286 (58 pages) Published By: The Johns Hopkins University Press], online at https://www.jstor.org/stable/284454.

For more information on the Ancient Greek language as a whole, see “A Digital Tutorial For Ancient Greek Based On John William White's First Greek Book” created by Jeff Rydberg-Cox at https://daedalus.umkc.edu/FirstGreekBook/.

Acknowledgements

My thanks to Dame Ursula Georges, who helped me work through the differences between the two classical Greek transliteration systems, and clued me in to how diacritical marks affect breathing and therefore transliteration. My thanks also to Mistress Alisoun MacCoul of Elphane, who explained to me the differences in dialects and pointed me towards understanding how the shift between languages would have occurred regarding the scope of my project.

My thanks also to those who proofread the data and the article to help get all my ducks from a rave to a row. I appreciate you all. Any errors still remaining in this data or explanations are mine.

The Names

A reminder: duplicates remain in the list to help get an idea of frequency.

Names in red are unique to Thera. Names that are in bold are found as feminine in Thera but masculine in other regions. Names that are in bold and italics are found as both masculine and feminine in Thera (there is a single example).

Appendices

Appendix A: Greek Alphabet with Ancient Pronunciation Chart

For more information on the IPA symbols and associated sounds, see https://www.ipachart.com/ and https://www.internationalphoneticassociation.org/content/full-ipa-chart.

Appendix B: Ancient Roman Transliteration Chart

Appendix C: Modern Classicist Transliteration Chart

Appendix D: Diacritical Markings Table

Note: The grave accent does not appear on names in this dataset. In pitch accent languages such as Ancient Greek, a grave accent causes the syllable it impacts to decrease in pitch. Grave accents in general will never appear in a list of isolated nouns, as they appear when a word that would otherwise have an acute accent on the final syllable is immediately followed by another word in the same sentence.